


if the fates allow

by veterization



Category: Nancy Drew (Video Games)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 22:59:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16963089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: A special machine delivered by P.G. Krolmeister sends Nancy into a future where she can witness firsthand the repercussions of her rejecting Frank Hardy.





	if the fates allow

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE! This story is the culmination of over a year's work and a lot of sitting and staring at a google doc. I started this story last December and foolishly thought I could have it finished by Christmas last year, which, looking back, is LAUGHABLE, but this Christmas, it gets to see the light of day.
> 
> This story is completely, shamelessly based on one of my favorite Hallmark Christmas films, "Just In Time For Christmas," which is so sweet it melts me every time I watch it. I found the plot would work bizarrely well for Frank and Nancy, and here we are.
> 
> Big thanks to my sister and writing cheerleader [androgenius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/androgenius) who gave me all the much-needed support to finish this story.
> 
> And as a little pre-reading note, I visualize this story taking place when Nancy is probably in her early twenties. PRESIDENT OF THE LET NANCY GROW UP CLUB. And as another pre-reading note, there are sprinklings of Ned/Nancy and Frank/Deirdre (not endgame) and Deirdre/Ned (endgame) in this story. Nothing big, but they're there.

Christmas is going to be strange this year, Nancy thinks as she navigates the airport. It’s the first year that isn’t going to involve Ned and her exchanging gifts under a well-lit tree. Actually, it’s the first Christmas that isn’t going to involve Ned at all. Nancy had offered—we can still be friends, she had said, well-meaning—but Ned had declined. 

Nancy found it hard to persist. It had been a rough year for them. They’d been drifting for ages, but the possibility of a break-up still seemed as far-off as ever, if not impossible, until suddenly it wasn’t. 

Still, it’s not like she’s going to be cooped up alone for the holidays. Her father had even offered to reschedule his and Hannah’s trip to see Aunt Eloise, if not just take Nancy along, but Nancy was in the middle of a case, and besides, Bess and George weren’t going to let her sit and brood in her room. On top of that, Frank and Joe were flying in for Christmas too, so all in all, she had plenty of support.

Although, Nancy thinks grimly as she wheedles her way over to the arrival board, narrowly avoiding elbows and tripping over stagnant suitcases, they could have picked a quieter time of year to travel.

She checks the flight number Frank texted her a few hours ago. According to the board, their plane touched down fifteen minutes ago. She can only assume they’re cramped around the baggage claim carousel right now, waiting.

“Hey, isn’t that that famous girl detective?”

Nancy turns around in time to identify the owner of the question, namely because Joe is grinning and waving as he approaches, Frank in tow.

“Hi, Joe,” she says. “Hey, Frank.”

He crushes her in a hug, then gently ruffles her hair. “Long time, no see, Nance,” he says. “You doing okay?” He glances briefly at Frank, as if silently confirming if he should keep talking or stop now before things get awkward. He turns back to Nancy. “Ned called me a while ago. He told me the whole story, just so you know.”

“Oh,” says Nancy. She’s caught between relief and annoyance that Joe already knows all the gory details about the break-up; as embarrassing as it is, she thinks it’ll be nicer to not have to tell the story herself again. “Well, um. I’m fine.”

“Come on, Joe, we’ve just said hello,” Frank says, stepping in. He steps in, rubbing Nancy’s shoulder in lieu of a greeting hug. “Just ignore him if he asks you anything too personal. It’s what I do.”

“Hey!”

Nancy smiles, and Frank mirrors it right back at her. This is exactly what she needs right now: friends who can make her feel as if everything is exactly as it should be, rather than hung loose in the air like a forgotten piece of laundry. She doesn’t quite like the feeling, hasn’t for the past few weeks ever since her and Ned broke up, and she’s still waiting for it to go away. Perhaps it’d be easier if Ned was still around as her friend, but she knows that to push him on that before he’s ready would be awfully selfish of her.

The walk back to the car, and the subsequent ride to The Regent, is lively. Joe launches into the full story of his and Frank’s last case, interrupted only by Frank piping in at times to correct Joe’s exaggerated details, while Nancy drives and manages the settings for the heat. 

“What about you, Miss Gumshoe?” Joe asks after concluding his tale. “Have you landed any interesting mysteries lately?”

“I’m working on one now, actually,” she says.

Frank shoots her a smile. “You wouldn’t happen to be needing assistance, would you?”

“You’re supposed to be on vacation, you know.”

“Detective work _is_ a vacation. At least, it totally is when we’re doing it with you,” Frank says.

There’s a thud, like Joe ramming his shoe into the back of the passenger seat. Frank makes a noise, something between an indignant _ouch!_ and an artificial cough to cover said outburst, and rearranges himself on the seat.

“Anyway,” Joe says loudly. “We’d love to help.” He rolls his shoulder. “After a good nap, though. And a shower. Definitely a shower. Is it just me, or do airplanes feel ten times ickier during the holiday season?”

“It is you. _Literally_. You spilled soda all over your tray table,” Frank reminds him.

“Only ‘cause some little brat kicked my seat!” Joe howls. “How dare you not take my side. My own flesh and blood!”

“Anyway, Nancy,” Frank says, completely ignoring the backseat and the complaints emitting from it in a manner that was so coolly detached it could only have been born of years of practice. “We’re really happy to be here. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, hasn’t it?” He pauses. “I just hope we didn’t come at a bad time.”

“Are you kidding?” Nancy says. “I can’t think of a better time.”

“Oh. I’m glad.”

Joe squeezes his way closer to the front. “This is gonna be an awesome Christmas, I just know it.”

\--

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite this many books on ballet before,” Frank says, sounding slightly overwhelmed, when Nancy takes him to the library later that day to do some research. They’re both up to their elbows in books that cover everything from pointe shoes to the great dancers of the nineteenth century. She had offered to bring Joe along too, but he had declined after hearing just exactly what it was Nancy was in the market of researching in favor of sleeping in. “Who would’ve thought something that looks so simple would have so much behind it?”

“I think that’s the case with most things that look simple,” Nancy says, turning a page.

“True,” Frank says.

He picks up another book. It’s a cold December, but the library runs hot, and Frank’s sleeves are pushed up as he flips through pages. They’re preparing for one of Nancy’s cases, one she got a call for two days ago. There’s a ballet troupe in St. Petersburg that’s been experiencing some bizarre acts of sabotage, but if Nancy intends to blend in to get to the bottom of the hijinks, she has to play the part of a knowledgeable assistant who would be worthy of working with the troupe in the first place.

It was unnecessarily kind for Frank to offer to help her, but she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised. Frank has always been kind. She looks up at him and finds he’s already watching her, a strange look in his eyes.

“Everything okay?” she asks him.

He stares for another moment, uninterrupted, before snapping out of whatever thought that must’ve held him. He closes the book he’s holding on his thumb.

“Nancy,” he says. “Are you—” He stops, carefully considering his words. “Are you and Ned doing all right?”

The question surprises her, although she supposes it shouldn’t. Frank’s her friend, and this is the sort of thing friends help each other through, like how Bess felt it necessary to bring her to Chic Boutique’s for a ten-hour shopping marathon when she heard the news about Ned. But Frank’s—well, Frank’s been something of an exception when it comes to Ned. She’s never been able to fully put her finger on it.

“As all right as we can be, I’d say,” Nancy ventures. “He needs some time, I think.”

“Are you getting back together?”

Nancy can’t see that happening. As hard as it’s been to remove Ned from her life—the picture frame of him on her dresser, the tea he likes in her kitchen cupboard, the letters he’s written her in her desk—she knows it wasn’t an ill decision. They just don’t fit. Not as a couple, anyway.

“No,” she says. She spares another glance at Frank, who appears to be doing his best to look as if he’s reading, but his eyes aren’t moving down the page. He seems a tad uncomfortable, and suddenly, she has an idea where all this is coming from. “Did Joe send you to ask me? Is he doing this all on Ned’s behalf?”

“No.” Frank looks almost hurt that Nancy was so quick to consider this. “It’s just me.”

“Oh.”

Silence falls between them again, this time with a tiny prickle of uncertainty. Nancy tries to refocus on the book in front of her. She’s fairly deep in it by now, to the point where it’s only thorough detail-work that’s being discussed, and it’s difficult to concentrate on all the French words and technical terms, especially now that her mind is wandering over to Frank. 

“Nancy,” he starts up again, this time closing the book entirely. He settles his hands on top of it, thumb brushing the spine, slightly battered from years of handling. “I wouldn’t—I mean, I didn’t do this for a long time because I didn’t want to—well, I knew what would’ve happened if I had done this back when—”

He looks incredibly frustrated with himself, like his vocabulary has abandoned him, if not flustered.

“I’m just wondering if you’d be open to getting some coffee with me.”

Nancy pushes her sleeve back to check her watch. It’s hardly time to take a break; they’ve only just started. “Tired already?” she asks.

“No, that’s not—” He stops again, then reaches across the table to grab Nancy’s wrist, seizing her attention. “Nancy, I want to take you out on a date.”

“Oh.” Something like the bottom of the carpet seems to drop a few inches. “ _Oh_.”

“I never would’ve asked while you were—well, you know. But I’ve always—I mean, it was kind of hard not to—” He stops to swallow. Nancy sees it physically move through his throat. His anxiety is a cloud that’s contagiously spreading to her. “I’ve felt something for you for a while now and I was just wondering if you ever…”

He trails off. Nancy doesn’t remember the last time she’s seen him this sheepish, this unsure. Nancy feels frozen, bespelled in place; she knows that Frank is waiting for her response, but she can’t seem to find any words.

“I… I never… at least, not like—not like that.”

It’s the truth, but it still feels like she’s somehow found the worst possible way to say it. She’s known Frank for _years_. They taught each other so much, trusted each other, relied on each other, not quite like a brother and sister, but still—not once did she ever think of him how he’s suggesting. It just hadn’t ever crossed her mind. She was with Ned, and she certainly had never assumed Frank felt the way he did—he’d never said a word, left a single hint, and Nancy’s good at picking up clues. Maybe not these kind?

“Oh,” Frank says, voice small. “I see.”

“It’s not like—Frank, you’re great, and I value your friendship so much. I just never—I mean, you never told me.”

“I’m telling you now.”

Frank’s voice is losing uncertainty and veering straight into audible regret. Nancy tries to figure out what it is she’s actually looking for here, because he’s _right_ , he is telling her, and would any other time really have been any better?

She can’t think. Her brain is whirring like an overheated machine, unable to let coherent thought through.

“Frank,” she starts to say, even though she has no idea what to say next.

A few library tables down, a man sneezes. It surprises Nancy, reminds her of where they both are and namely, just how public it is. Suddenly the atmosphere feels less than welcoming, her back stiff, the tall pile of books offensive, the heartbroken slump of Frank’s shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Frank says. Nancy realizes with growing horror that he’s quietly stacking books together, a gesture of his imminent departure. She doesn’t want him to leave, of course she doesn’t, but she also doesn’t know what to say to get him to stay. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Joe was right.”

Joe was right? Joe _knew_ about this?

“Maybe it’s better if I go for now.”

Nancy gets to her feet, the sound of the chair scraping on the floor beneath her almost jarringly loud. “Frank, wait.”

Her mind is a vandalized room, a mess of words that both comfort and confuse, and Nancy isn’t sure what she needs to say to fix this situation that spiraled so quickly, but she knows that running away from it will only make it that much harder to address. Frank’s hollow look, eyes trained to the books he’s stacking together, devoid of the carefree emotion there earlier, sear into her memory like a brand.

She opens her mouth to say something—anything—that might help. A library associate sweeping by, eyes narrowed, silences Nancy before she can.

“Let’s remember the others here in the library with us,” the woman whispers, pressing a finger deliberately to her lips. “This is a quiet space.”

“I was just leaving. Sorry about the noise,” Frank says, and with that he’s winding his scarf around his neck and heading, brisk and quick, for the exit, disappearing behind a bookshelf.

Nancy acts on instinct and tries to go after him, but by the time she makes up her mind to do so and follows Frank’s trail, he’s long gone and left the library. Nancy can imagine a couple of places he went, the most notable being The Regent, but even if she were to stake out the lobby until Frank reappears, what then? What honest words could possibly fix this situation?

She needs to give herself the time to think first; her brain feels like it’s been microwaved for too long.

She cleans up the books, one by one, and waits to feel a little better about what just happened.

\--

Frank ignores her text messages. Nancy doesn’t quite expect him to open up, not after the disastrous afternoon they just had, but she also doesn’t expect him to go radio silence, which seems to be his route of choice. It makes her feel uncomfortably helpless.

Her father would most likely tell her to be more patient, which is a virtue she is, admittedly, not good at exercising. Her own frustration is only fueling her restlessness to solve the situation, a frustration aimed at her own ignorance. Some detective she is to never notice what exactly Frank had been feeling and, apparently, hinting at for years.

_Years_. This isn’t just some emotional hangnail he came running to her about on a whim. This is something real he’s been keeping to himself for a while, sitting on, brewing over, trying to figure out. The pain it must’ve caused him—

Nancy closes her eyes, feeling the regret wash over her. She doesn’t know how she would do it all differently, but she still wishes she could. When did it start for Frank? Had there been a specific moment in time, and had she noticed at all? How many others knew? It almost makes her sick to imagine Bess or George keeping such a secret from her.

And how did she never realize? The hurt on Frank’s face when she confessed to him that she had never thought of him outside of a platonic relationship replays behind her eyelids like a horrible movie. That must was true. She never had the reason to look at Frank differently, not with Ned around, not when Frank had never suggested it to her before.

If she thinks about it now, the possibility of _her and Frank_ , of what that would be like, feel like…

She just doesn’t know.

The cold doesn’t quite touch Nancy until she’s unlocking the front door to her home and stepping inside, suddenly aware of just how numb her hands had gotten in the chill now that she’s back in the warmth. She pulls off her boots and heads for the kitchen as if on autopilot, mind still too drowned in a tsunami of thoughts to focus on a task properly.

There’s a note on the microwave in Hannah’s handwriting letting her know that she and Nancy’s father left for their trip today and that there’s leftover lasagna in the fridge, but Nancy’s not the least bit interested in food even if she’s had little more than snacks and pencil shavings today since breakfast.

She can’t stop thinking about Frank. Her stomach whirls like it’s a washing machine on a spin cycle.

The note ends with a reminder that there’s a package waiting by the front door for her. Upon finding it, Nancy can’t help but be surprised by its size and that she didn’t notice it earlier: it’s a rather large cardboard box, and strangely heavy as well. She tears off the tape and finds, cocooned in packing peanuts, a device that looks like a cross between a car engine and a factory machine. A folded note is nestled between it and the packing peanuts. Nancy grabs it.

_ND,_

_I’ve been dabbling around in my workshop for a while and came up with this! It’s just a prototype but you know what they say, the first draft of anything is the best. Or something like that._

_Merry Christmas!_

_PG Krolmeister_

She turns it around, looking for more—an explanation, a manual—but finds nothing. She certainly has no way of figuring out what it is through guess work. It’s a bulky thing, swimming in a giant box that takes up a fair bit of space, too heavy to maneuver around, with too many knobs and buttons to make sense of. She would usually leave it alone and go to bed, but something about the enigma of the device intrigues Nancy.

She manages to haul it out of the box after gathering her strength to do so. It’s almost as heavy as it looks, each tube and rod of precisely-crafted metal only adding to its weight. Nancy runs her fingers over the thick pipes across the side of the device, complexly curled like a digestive tract. She taps her fingernail on the metal; a tinny echo roams the inside of the pipe.

The board of buttons on the front is the bit she’s most curious about. Red, green, some big, some dime-sized. Nancy doesn’t even know where to begin. There isn’t a manual in sight either, even after rummaging through the packing peanuts. A cautious corner of her brain is telling her not to mess with anything she doesn’t know the purpose of, but if she had always followed that philosophy, many of her mysteries never would’ve been solved.

She presses in on the green button, the most innocuous-seeming of the bunch. The machine has no comments to share on what to do next, or what she’s accomplished by pressing it, silent except for the release of air pressure as she pushes it.

She presses it again. And once more, just for good measure. 

Perhaps there’s an on/off switch she’s missing, or perhaps it needs to be plugged in in order to function. If she weren’t so emotionally drained right now, she’d probably investigate further, but as it stands, she can’t currently drum up enough interest to fix a machine that may or may not be as pointless as the bon-bon catapult Krolmeister sent her last time. She’ll look into it tomorrow—assuming more pressing issues don’t arise for her to deal with.

For now, she’ll just let herself digest the day, try to focus on something other than what happened in the library. Frank and Joe are going to be here for the rest of the holidays, and she can’t let one sour conversation ruin their entire trip. To say nothing of the case she still has on her shoulders waiting to be solved, or the obligatory Christmas cheer Bess is going to no doubt dragoon her into soon. The holidays are usually the best time of year, but right now, Nancy’s not quite feeling the festivity through all the stress she’s in the clutches of. 

Her eyelids droop where she stands. The machine from Krolmeister will just have to wait, as will everything else until she gets a chance to decompress and get some sleep. The walk up the stairs to her bedroom feels astronomical, each step weighing on her.

She lays down in her bed, letting out a sigh that probably ruffles the moon, and sleeps.

\--

Things don’t feel any better when she wakes up. If anything, the memories of the horrid evening flood her like a sledgehammer, of Frank’s pale face and the mountains of books separating them in the library, of her running out feeling befuddled and overwhelmed. She doesn’t even want to consider how Frank felt; the mere thought leaves her cold and apologetic.

She knows she has to fix this. Her and Frank have been working as a team for as long as she can remember her detective career spanning, and one botched conversation shouldn’t be capable of ruining all of that.

She’s going to call him. She rolls out of bed thinking this, assuring herself of this, and finds her phone on the bedside table.

Frank doesn’t pick up when she calls, though. It doesn’t even properly ring—it starts beeping instead, the number disconnected and no longer in service. It doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe something happened. A storm of dread grows in Nancy’s stomach as she considers the possibilities—the best being that Frank’s simply broken his phone, perhaps dropped it somewhere. Either way, Joe should be able to clear it up. She scrolls through her contacts until she finds his name.

This time, the call goes through.

“Joe,” she says in lieu of a hello. “Is Frank all right? He’s not picking up his phone. It sounds like his whole phone number isn’t working anymore.”

“Nancy? Nancy Drew?”

“Joe,” Nancy says, impatient. “Could you be serious for a moment?”

“I would say the same thing to you. Since when do you keep in touch with Frank? Is this some kind of weird joke?”

He sounds oddly protective like Nancy hasn’t ever heard him sound before—almost hostile, each word bearing bristles. She imagines that this is a response to what happened last night, albeit a childish one, because of course Frank told Joe everything, and of course Joe sides with his brother. Nancy isn’t sure she deserves such an icy reception, though.

“Joe, this isn’t a joke,” she says gently. “I understand if he’s hurt, and that’s why I want to talk with him.”

“He’s a little busy.”

“Okay, then can you tell him to stop by my place today?”

“Have you lost your mind?” Joe snaps suddenly. “Seriously, are you okay? Frank’s in New York.”

“New York? Joe, I just saw him last night.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, Joe, I did.”

Her phone vibrating in her hand momentarily distracts her, and when she spares the screen a glance, she sees a text from a Ned, asking where she is and if she’s all right. It seems like an odd thing for him to message her, unless she forgot they had plans for today? She could’ve sworn that Ned had sidestepped any attempts she had made to invite him for a post-break-up lunch with the determination of a criminal hiding from the police, but then again, yesterday was a mess. It wouldn’t surprise her too much to consider that she may’ve let something slip her mind after what happened with Frank.

She holds the phone back up to her ear to find Joe mid-rant.

“—if you’re so interested,” he’s saying hotly. “I don’t see why you’re not just waiting until he comes to River Heights for Christmas and having this conversation with him in person.”

“Hold on. You’re saying Frank went back to New York last night just to fly back to River Heights again soon?”

“What?”

“ _What?_ ”

Nancy’s more confused than ever, and it sounds like Joe’s only getting more and more agitated with her lack of understanding of the situation. She wishes she _would_ understand, but she’s where she likes being least: in the complete unknown. None of this is making any real sense.

“Listen, I’m not going to mediate for you two. Just talk to him yourself like a grown-up.”

With that, Joe hangs up.

A second later, barely giving Nancy the chance to be enraged, her phone rings again. It’s the River Heights Police Department this time, and Nancy picks up quickly, deciding to shelve Joe’s mood until after this call.

“Where the hell are you?” grumbles Chief McGinnis a moment after Nancy picks up. “Are you all right? You’re late.”

“Late for what?”

“Are you trying to be funny, Drew? Because I don’t do humor when I’m already angry.”

“Did we have an appointment set up that I forgot?”

“What did I _just say_?” McGinnis growls. “Just get to the station. No excuses.”

The last thing she hears before the line clicks and the call ends is McGinnis’ exasperated huffing.

A strange, twisting feeling is snaking its way around Nancy’s gut. Something isn’t right here. She feels like she’s been left out of an elaborate practical joke, too many pieces missing for any of this to make sense. But after the night she had last night, would anybody really find it appropriate to mess with her like this, now of all times? She could understand Joe feeling protective over his brother, but McGinnis—there’s something she’s not seeing here.

She sits down, feeling a bit dizzy. It feels like she’s missing details, if not entire chunks of the story, and her only hope of figuring it out is tracking them down. She starts scrolling through her phone, looking for clues, and finds nothing but more confusion: all of her text threads—Bess, Hannah, Ned, even some names she doesn’t recognize—are completely unfamiliar to her. And—

The _date_. The date is all wrong—at least, the year is. How can this possibly be? The year on all of her text messages is three years ahead.

She frantically opens up her emails next, hoping it’s nothing but a glitch, a strange error only affecting her texts, but her inbox is the same, the dates all the same, all of them _wrong_.

A coil of panic hits her like lightning. She looks around the room, and realizes that it’s changed too, not quite like she remembers—cleaner, emptier. The souvenirs on her desk are gone, and her closet is vacant of everything but a few hangers, almost as if she doesn’t live here anymore.

She rushes downstairs, horrified of what she’ll find, but thankfully, the rest of the house seems to be in order, and based on the picture frames on the wall and the books on the shelf, Nancy’s father definitely still lives here. The calendar on the wall in the living room does give her pause, though. The year—it matches up exactly with Nancy’s phone.

How is this _possible_? Is she experiencing some type of horrible brain damage from one too many smacks to the head?

She fumbles for her phone again, looking for someone who she knows she can trust, even if they can’t help. She finds Bess’ contact, hurrying to press call. Every ring that she waits through is a massive thump of fear in her chest, heart speeding up until the call is picked up.

“Hey, Nancy, what’s up?” Bess says.

“Bess,” Nancy says slowly, mostly because she’s not sure what awaits her on the other side of the call. “I think I need help.”

\--

She explains the situation as calmly as possible once Bess shows up, to the best of her earthly ability. She’s spent years debunking ridiculous phenomena, always remaining a staunch nonbeliever, but this—this feels a tad out of the realm of reasonability she typically operates under.

Logic—that is, the only logic she can find here—points to her being the odd one out. Everyone else seems completely unaffected, rather used to the world that’s shocking her so profoundly right now, and that points to… brain damage? Memory loss? Perhaps one of those knocks on the head has finally caught up with her?

Bess immediately sets about draping a blanket over Nancy’s shoulders and rooting around for tea in the kitchen cupboards. Nancy would appreciate the gesture much more if she were sick with the flu, not trapped in an amnesiac hellscape.

“You never know what helps,” Bess defends, pulling a packet of Darjeeling tea out of the cupboard and preparing a teacup. “I only have forty minutes before work, but I can—”

“Work,” Nancy repeats, eyes narrowing. “Where is that?”

Bess looks genuinely concerned now. She stops fiddling with the teabag to shoot a worried glance in Nancy’s direction. “Oh, this isn’t good,” she murmurs. Nancy wonders if she intended to mutter that bit under her breath. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know, Bess. I really don’t know.”

“Okaaaaay. That’s helpful. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Nancy colors when a book-laden library table and Frank’s ashen face comes to mind. She rubs the bridge of her nose. “Frank was here. We went to the library to do some research. Then I…” _Broke his heart_ , supplies her traitorous mind. “...went home and slept.”

“Wait, when did you and Frank start talking again?”

Nancy frowns. “When did we _stop_?”

“Ages ago! You really don’t remember?”

The urge to panic—or at the very least, alter her tone to include some distinct irritation—starts to bubble inside her. She shifts in her seat, the blanket tucked over her shoulders more of an itchy cloud around her than a comforting presence.

“I think,” she says, trying her best to do the reasonable thing and thinking painfully hard on what exactly that might be. “I think I need to go to a doctor.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

\--

Fortunately—or possibly unfortunately—the doctors find absolutely nothing. Her brain scans are normal and her vitals seem fine, and aside from a bit of a high heart rate, which Nancy is not even slightly surprised by at this point—she’s in perfect medical shape. It should be rejuvenating to hear that she doesn’t have any brain damage, but if anything, it only pries a door to a mystery open further.

She’d be more excited about the idea of stumbling upon a mystery if she wasn’t so trapped inside the middle of it. Keeping that distance is important to her, and all the cases where she couldn’t were by far the hardest on her—but even then, she at least had full use of all her mental faculties.

“So?” Bess says, eagerly getting to her feet once she sees Nancy coming into the waiting room. “What’s the verdict?”

“Well, my brain is fine.”

“Yay! Or is that not yay? I’m not really sure which one I’m rooting for here.”

“Trust me,” Nancy says grimly. “I feel the same way.” She thinks of the doctor’s confused befuddled face as she explained the situation to him. She can’t believe she was hoping for a brain injury here, but she can’t deny that it would’ve been easier to understand. “They checked for bruises, contusions, swelling, anything. The scans they did didn’t show anything either.”

“So if we can rule out some bad guy clobbering you over the head… what options are left?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Nancy says, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable, if not out of her depth. There’s a fair chunk of logic missing here, and logic is the main component of her diet. Even putting logic aside, there’s just a lot of _information_ missing too. She can’t very well solve the puzzle when she’s only seeing half of the pieces.

Bess’ look of shock isn’t exactly encouraging. “Really? So what’s your plan of action right now?”

_Plan of action_. As if Nancy is even close to one right now.

“I—I’m really not sure.” Admitting it is nearly as crushing as thinking it. “Right now, all I know is that I’m seriously confused.”

Bess’ face mirrors her own emotions perfectly: a cocktail of perplexion, disappointment, and uncertainty. Nancy looks away from it, starting to feel slightly off-kilter.

“You know what we need?” Bess says, attempting to lift up her voice into something bright and chipper. “How does ice cream sound?”

\--

“Peanut butter, please. Or, well, um. Maybe Koko Kringles? No. Pistachio! Or—”

Nancy takes a long look around Scoop as Bess vacillates between ice cream flavors, grateful to find that at least _some_ things never change. Scoop looks exactly the same as always: the same tables, the same carrot-colored walls, the same dessert spoons. Nancy takes comfort in the familiarity, finding a table she and George and Bess have always tended to gravitate toward because of its stellar view out the window into the street. Bess takes a seat next to her with two cups of ice cream and what looks suspiciously like three milkshakes cradled in her arms, and reddens in the cheeks when Nancy takes in the sugary feast.

“I haven’t been here in forever,” she says in self-defense. “And the malts are really good!”

“I know, Bess. I haven’t lost _all_ my memories yet, you know.”

“I know,” Bess says from around her straw. “Where do things get fuzzy for you?”

“I don’t remember anything past that day when Frank and I were at the library. We were researching that ballet case in Russia.”

“Russia?” repeats Bess. “Nancy. That was like—three years ago.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. The manager did it. I remember because I was really rooting for him. He was _insanely cute_.”

Nancy’s eyes widen. “The manager?” He was the one who had called her in, and had seemed super receptive on the phone when Nancy spoke to him. She might have to remember to check on that when she wakes up out of this horrible nightmare, which she’s starting to think this all is. Three years of lost memories? To say nothing of lost friends, and so many of them, at that.

Speaking of—

“Where’s George?” Nancy asks.

“In New York. Permanently.” Bess stops. Her eyes narrow a fraction. “I feel weird explaining all this stuff you already know to you. Are you _really_ not messing with me here?”

“Bess. I promise I’m not.”

“Okay, fine. It’s just weird, that’s all.”

“Trust me, I know,” Nancy says. She has the feeling that it’ll only be weirder for the people not in on the situation, which she isn’t even sure how to explain in the first place, given she has no clue what’s going on or why or how. All she can do for now is fill herself in on the gaps. “Why is George in New York?”

“Work. This huge tech company there wanted her. I was kind of jealous, at least until I saw how tiny her apartment was. Nancy, we’re talking basically no closet space.”

“And Ned?”

“Still here, of course. He sells insurance.”

“And my dad and Hannah? Are they okay?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re both right now in Florida visiting your aunt for the holidays, though.”

Their conversation—which is starting to feel more and more like banging her head purposefully against a concrete wall—is suddenly interrupted with a vibration of Nancy’s phone on the table. It’s Chief McGinnis calling again.

“Did you conveniently lose your hearing when I told you to come here ASAP three hours ago?” he growls the second Nancy picks up the call. “I’m short a detective here. One I happen to pay a salary in exchange for her presence.”

Nancy reddens. Somewhere between the new world, new life, and new surroundings she was flooded with had distracted her from following McGinnis’ orders the last time he called, to say nothing of the medical attention and multiple brain scans that followed.

“I’m sorry, Chief, but I’m having some health problems.”

“Health problems!” he barks. “What’s going on?”

“I’m, uh. Experiencing some memory loss.”

“ _Memory loss?_ How the hell did that happen? Did you hit your head?”

“I can’t actually remember.”

He huffs. Nancy can hear an overlapping symphony of phones ringing in the background. “Well, this is great. My head detective is down for the count while the rest of us are swarmed with work. Any idea how long this is gonna last?”

“Uh, no.”

A long, hard silence settles over the phone. When McGinnis speaks again, it’s with the voice of a man pushed into uncharted territory: compromise.

“You get a few days off,” he concedes. “But that’s that. Just because it’s the holidays doesn’t mean crime is taking a vacation.”

With that, he hangs up.

Detective. _Head_ detective. Nancy isn’t sure why this is rattling her so much, but she really didn’t expect it. As much as she loves River Heights, she always considered it more of a stepping stone than a place to settle in. Most of the town doesn’t think too favorably of her anyway—Toni still gives her the stink-eye whenever she’s dragged into Scoop by Bess—and it’s not exactly rife with challenging crime. 

Bess is cringing when Nancy ends the call. McGinnis’ grumpy shouting probably traveled across the table.

“Everything all right?” she asks around her spoon.

Quite the contrary, things are the furthest they possibly could be from all right. If anything, this sets a nail in the coffin that this is a legitimate problem and Nancy isn’t being gleefully pranked here, because in no world would Chief McGinnis partake in a practical joke of this caliber. Or any caliber. Or laugh at one either.

If everything is normal for everyone except Nancy, the common denominator is undeniably her. She’s the odd one out. She’s the one stuck in a completely alternate timeline. A lifetime of being a classic skeptic hasn’t prepared her for a moment like this, and she almost refuses to believe it now—someone like Joe, if Nancy were to call him and share her tale, he’d absolutely devour it, and spiral off into conspiracy theories he’s read on parallel universes while Frank long-sufferingly shuts him down, except—

Except Joe doesn’t seem to like Nancy very much in this universe. Nancy sighs.

“So how did it happen that Frank and I lost touch?”

Bess looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I figured it had something to do with him asking you out and you rejecting him. You never really gave me the details though.”

“I didn’t?”

“I think you were embarrassed,” guesses Bess. “He and Joe are still working for the Network, I think. Every now and then Joe will post a selfie on Instagram of himself somewhere far off in the world in a beautiful country and I’m reminded of just how tiny River Heights is.” She looks awfully sullen for a moment, as if daydreaming of a Parisian cafe she’s never seen with her own eyes, and then snaps back to reality. “Where were we?”

“Frank and me not talking anymore.”

“Right!” Bess says, picking up where she left off. “All I know is that he left earlier than intended that year when he came to visit. And you were very… silent?”

“Silent?”

“It’s nicer than saying _grumpy_ ,” mumbles Bess. “You were basically in a bad mood for the entire duration of what’s supposed to be the happiest time of year. And I bet Frank wasn’t all that cheerful up in New York either.”

“And we didn’t talk ever again?”

Bess pauses; she seems to realize that she’s about to deliver unfavorable news. “If you did, you didn’t tell me.”

Before Nancy can prod for more details, the bell over the front door jingles as it’s pushed open and Ned bursts in like a frantic wingless bird. His eyes zip over each table before landing on Nancy.

“There you are!” he says, visibly frazzled. “I was so worried—you weren’t answering my texts and you didn’t come home last night. I was petrified something had happened! Going to the station and hearing from McGinnis that you got injured definitely didn’t help!”

“Ned,” Nancy says slowly, wishing horribly that she could draw up three years of misplaced memories to figure out exactly how to treat him right now. Last she remembered, Ned was avoiding her like the plague and—according to Burt—deep in a post-break-up funk that manifested itself in twenty-four-seven pajamas and lots of peanut butter eaten straight from the jar. “Uh, sorry for worrying you. I’m fine.”

“You are?” His eyes zip over Nancy’s body as if confirming this. “But McGinnis said…”

“Well,” says Nancy. “I had, um. A bit of a head problem. It’s fine.”

Ned sighs in relief. He collapses into the empty chair next to their table and reaches forward to squeeze Nancy’s hand. Nancy watches the movement with widening eyes, feeling—not for the first time—that she may be missing valuable information.

“Thank god,” he says. “I was calling and calling last night. I started looking everywhere for you.”

“Oh.”

“Nancy,” Bess pipes up. She looks as if she’s suddenly remembered something urgent, like she’s left the stove on somewhere. “Can I have a quick word with you?”

She gets to her feet, spares Ned one glance, and immediately starts cocking her head toward the corner of the shop, eyes following the same path. Subtlety was never Bess’ strong suit by any means.

“Sure,” Nancy says after five more seconds of painfully conspicuous hinting. She puts her spoon down.

Bess hurries over to the Swap-A-Lot machine, tucking herself next to it. Nancy follows, never having been more aware of just how blatant their intentions were just now, but Ned, thankfully, doesn’t seem to be paying too much attention.

“Okay, so,” Bess says, eyes wide. “I may have forgotten a really important detail about your new life.”

“What is it?”

“Ned’s your boyfriend again. Oh, and you’re living together. _Oh_ , and nobody really thinks you’re all that happy together, but what do I know.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Well, it was kinda obvious that you weren’t actually still in love with him. He just moped around for so long that everybody thought you just sorta… gave in.”

Nancy feels a headache starting to creep up the back of her skull. What’s coming next? Will Ned roll a stroller into the shop and start rocking her child back and forth? She rubs the bridge of her nose.

“Okay,” she says slowly, trying to find a way this is at all _okay_. “And... we live together?”

“Yeah. For about a year now.”

To say this is overwhelming is something of an understatement. She tries to imagine how she’s supposed to pull this off, specifically how she’s supposed to go home to her and Ned’s place tonight, as expected, and pretend everything is hunky-dory, let alone that she knows how to navigate the kitchen cabinets and the bedroom dressers.

Bess seems to sense her distress, seeing as she squeezes Nancy’s forearm and says, brimming with confidence, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this!” before leading her back to the table.

Bess slips back into her seat. Nancy follows, although cautiously.

“Hey, Ned,” Bess says, all smiles as she launches straight ahead. Nowadays, Nancy has the feeling that Bess would be more receptive with helping her out on a mystery than she was three years ago, back when the very idea of snooping or lying made her go pale in the face. “Would you mind if I borrowed Nancy for a few days and had her stay at my place? I’ve been having boy trouble and could really use a shoulder to blow my nose into.”

Ned looks like he very much wants to say no, but his hard-drilled kindness is preventing him from being able to. He sighs. “I mean, if you think—” He expels a breath, sparing Bess a quick glance. “If you need Nancy’s help, who am I to say no.”

“Great!” Bess says.

“Um, well. Of course.” He turns to Nancy, eyes hopeful, as if half-expecting her to change her mind. “I mean, as long as you’re well enough. Is your head really okay?”

“She’s fine!” Bess proclaims, with a smile so wide it’s almost too much so. “And I’ll take great care of her.”

Ned opens his mouth, as if prepared to sheepishly rebuttal this decision, if not gently badger Nancy out of it, but ultimately decides not to, closing it again. He takes a glance at his wristwatch, sighing. “Shoot, I have to get back to the office,” he says. He turns to Nancy, eyes imploring. “Call me later, okay?”

“Sure,” Nancy says, although she has no idea what this phone call would entail.

He shoots her an incredibly strained smile, then seems to deliberate over how to properly say goodbye given her apparent injury. He settles for leaning across the table and giving her a quick kiss on the forehead before retreating, hurrying out the door. The bell jingles after him.

“Did I do okay?” Bess asks, sounding sheepish, once the over-the-door bell tingles as Ned leaves. “I figured you’d rather not stay with your ex but _not_ your ex—does this make sense? ‘Cause I’m starting to get confused.”

Nancy grabs her wrist, squeezing consolingly. “It makes sense. And thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Nancy! Obviously I did! Or do you want to fill Ned in on the extent of your crazy memory problems that make you sound like you’re missing a few major screws?”

“Hey!” Nancy says, but the insult isn’t as great as the point Bess is making: best to not share this with everyone in town. She doesn’t really want to try and explain this to anyone else—Bess was a necessity for her own sanity, but the more people she drags into this mess, the hairier it’ll be.

“Sorry. But it’ll be great. It’ll be like one long sleepover, like we always wanted to do when we were kids. And we’ll make brownies every night.”

“Every night?” Nancy repeats.

“Okay, every other night. Or whenever we run out.” She tugs at her shirt, as if checking it for excess fabric. “Probably shouldn’t overdo it.”

Same old Bess with the same old sweet tooth. At least some things never change. Nancy watches as Bess licks her ice cream spoon clean with her tongue—as thoroughly as possible, of course—and considers, half terrified, exactly what her next move is. She’s been in a lot of gnarly situations, but this one is especially out of her depths.

\--

Bess’ apartment, as small and cramped as it is, is exuding so much charm—in much the same way its renter does—that Nancy can’t help but feel slightly calmed stepping inside.

“Here we are,” Bess announces, brandishing her arms. She takes a look at the various messes and turns pink. “Um. I didn’t know you would be coming over today, so, uh. Don’t judge the looks of the place too much. I promise I own a dustpan.”

Nancy doesn’t mind; it’s a pleasant reminder that if nothing else, Bess is essentially the same as she was years ago. Even then, her bedroom was always chaos, stuffed animals on every flat surface, upturned makeup on the vanity, unmade sheets wrinkled on the bed. Her apartment now reflects that same energy, plus some seasonal cheer, including sparkly gold garlands hung from the kitchen shelves and a mistletoe attached crookedly to the ceiling. The showstopper is obviously the overstuffed Christmas tree in the living room, too tall to fit properly, the tip curved into the ceiling. Bess always _did_ have a habit of going overboard at the tree lot and miscalculating just how tall nine feet is.

The polaroids on the fridge steal away Nancy’s attention a moment later. She doesn’t recognize any of the pictures, despite recognizing herself in them. One features her, Bess, and George squeezed into the frame with what seems to be a table full of colorful umbrella-clad drinks in front of them.

“When did we take this?” Nancy asks, pulling it out from underneath the magnet to take a better look.

Bess looks over her shoulder. “That one was when we all went to Mexico for George’s birthday,” she says. “Those guys on the beach were cute, remember them?” Bess winces a moment after the words register. “Oh, sorry. ‘Course you don’t.”

Nancy puts the photo back in place and tries not to be unseated by the reminder that her memory is little more than a holey block of Swiss cheese right now. She focuses her attention on another photo: another Polaroid featuring Bess smacking a kiss on a boy’s cheek.

“Hey, Bess,” Nancy says as Bess hangs their coats up. “You’re not dating anyone right now, are you?”

“Ha ha,” Bess dryly says. “No.”

“Who’s this then?”

Nancy brandishes the picture. For a moment, Bess colors, arguing. “That’s—just some guy I work with,” she says, waving her hands about as if to dispel any unwanted thoughts from Nancy’s brain. “I don’t know. For as much of a romantic as I am, I’m not really lucky in love. I sort of just leave that stuff to you and George.”

“George?” Nancy repeats.

“Ugh, Nancy. It’s exhausting trying to fill you in on three years worth of drama.” Bess seizes the photo from Nancy’s hand and shoves it under the toaster. “I can’t believe George isn’t here for any of this. I need an eggnog stat.”

“Bess, you just had a ton of milkshakes.”

Bess nibbles on a fingernail. “Too much dairy?” she asks. “Then maybe some leftovers. You up for Chinese?” She checks the time on the microwave. “It’s a bit late for lunch, but time is just an illusion, right, Nance?” A crease of worry touches her forehead. “Maybe for you more than other people,” she adds in a mumble before pulling take-out containers out of the fridge.

Nancy sighs. She could probably stand to eat something more substantial than ice cream, but hunger is the last thing on her mind right now. She watches, detached, as Bess prepares food, as if she’s illegally entered someone else’s life, someone else’s apartment. None of this feels normal. None of this feels like reality.

She has to get to the bottom of this.

\--

Nancy’s headache shows no sign of waning even after eating, the insistent throbbing of it behind her eyes only gaining strength as the evening drags on. It doesn’t help that she’s exhausted, as if having just finished a long airplane ride, although it isn’t lost on her that she definitely _might_ have traveled in some way, even if that way was time travel.

No. That’s absurd thinking. If Nancy’s cases have taught her anything, it’s that such paranormal drivel is just that— _drivel_. To indulge in it is a waste of time, even if the situation is downright unexplainable right now.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to be the only one in need of painkillers, because by the time she gets to Twickham’s, their shelves are woefully bereft.

“Everything sells faster during the holidays,” an employee lugging boxes around tells her. “We’ll get new shipments in a few days.”

Nancy frowns at the lacking selection. “I wouldn’t have thought that pills make very good stocking stuffers.”

“Ha!” the employee says. “I don’t think they’re gifts. More like coping mechanisms. Family reunions, you know?”

“Right,” Nancy replies, even if she has no experience in such a thing being unpleasant. The holidays were always a fun time in the Drew household, with Hannah cooking up a roast big enough for everyone to have seconds—if not thirds—before meeting up with the Faynes and Marvins for a round of caroling through the neighborhood.

It doesn’t help that the last thing she remembers from three years ago was the start of what would’ve been a great holiday, one she has no memory of now. Everyone had made plans to decorate gingerbread houses together and watch cheesy Christmas movies in Bess’ basement, and whether or not that ever ended up happening is lost to Nancy. She feels her shoulders droop.

She decides to cut her losses and go back to Bess’; a good night’s rest might be all she needs to shake off this heavy feeling in her bones and the throbbing in her head. Right as she rounds the corner, though, she nearly collides with another shopper.

“Sorry,” she says, then looks up and freezes.

That’s—

It’s _Frank_. He looks unbelievably mature, distinguished in everything from smart clothes to a slightly older face, his jacket well-fitted and his hair nicely tended to and his shoes polished, and Nancy’s nearly urged to take a step back at the punch that comes at seeing him. After all the drama she’s learned about their now-rocky relationship, she didn’t expect to run into him during a pharmaceutical errand, no less, and it’s clear that he’s equally surprised, eyes like beach balls as he recognizes the face in front of him.

“Nancy?” he asks, almost disbelieving.

Her words leave her for a full five seconds before she remembers her manners again. “Frank!” she says. “What are you doing here?”

“Just here for the holidays,” he says. He’s looking at her like he’s chatting with a ghost, like he’s both on edge by what he’s witnessing and not entirely sure he can trust his own eyes. “Joe told me you called the other day.”

“Oh. _Oh_. Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I think you just worried him a bit. He hasn’t heard from you in so long—”

“I know, and I’m sorry about that too. I know this won’t really make sense to you, but doing that, cutting you guys out—it doesn’t even make sense to me. It’s not something I would do.”

A bitter little quirk tugs on Frank’s mouth. “But you did,” he says. “You did do it.”

“But I—you have to understand. You see—”

“Well,” says a familiar voice. Nancy _knows_ that voice. “Look who it is.”

Deirdre Shannon comes strolling toward her, arms folded and eyes narrowed. She looks mostly the same since the last time Nancy saw her, save for a shorter haircut and darker lipstick.

Oh, and for some unexplainable, truly bizarre reason, she also happens to have her hand curled around Frank’s bicep. Nancy stares at the contact for longer than intended, and by the time she looks up, Deirdre’s smug face is looking back at her. Nancy feels something that feels inexplicably like the angriest of reds briefly flare up inside her.

“Didn’t know you were still hanging out in the sticks,” says Deirdre. “Didn’t want to get out of River Heights?” She leans in just a smidge, her smile too smug to be anything but condescending. “Or just couldn’t?”

Nancy is too stunned to come up with much of a retort. “I like it here,” she says eventually. She has no better explanation—she always thought she’d leave too, if only to pursue bigger cases, but apparently she didn’t.

“Don’t worry about it,” Deirdre says, her obnoxious smile not wavering. “Not all of us are cut out for the big city.”

“I’m sure Nancy travels so much that she’s not here much anyway,” Frank says, which sounds like it might just be a call to her defense. Shame that Nancy has no idea if it’s true or not.

More importantly, she can’t stop looking at the tight, almost taloned grip Deirdre has on Frank’s arm, fingernails digging in like an eagle taking possession. It looks like—but it can’t be—

“Um… are you two…” she starts, trailing off when she’s not quite sure how she wants to phrase this. That, or her tongue is refusing to say the words.

Thankfully, Deirdre cuts in. “Together? We are. For a few years now, actually.” She smiles, her tongue slightly visible between her teeth, as if to say _jealous?_ Nancy’s ashamed at how well her ploy is actually working.

She stops, examining her own indignance. Frank can date whomever he wants. She has no claim over him, not even a welcomed opinion to give if they’re no longer friends, and has no right to feel prickly inside at the sight of Deirdre’s hand curled white-tight around Frank’s arm.

It’s probably Deirdre she has a problem with, rather than the situation. 

“Anyway,” Frank says, sounding about as uncomfortable as Nancy feels. “We should really be going.”

“Right,” Nancy says. “Well, it was nice to see you.”

“You, too.”

He doesn’t sound too genuine about it, Nancy notes with no shortage of despondency. The two of them turn into another aisle and out of sight, leaving Nancy to almost wonder if she had hallucinated that entire encounter.

Frank and Deirdre. The idea is almost too absurd to even entertain, and yet… It’s not like Nancy knows any better what’s best for Frank, much less if he’s happy in this ludicrous, surely _fictional_ relationship.

\--

By the time Nancy gets back to Bess’ place two hours later, her headache a stabbing behemoth that no amount of ibuprofen can ever appease now, Bess is sitting at the kitchen counter eating cereal for dinner and scrolling through Instagram. She sees Nancy and perks up, dropping her spoon.

“Good news!” she says through a happy mouthful. “George is coming for Christmas!”

“I just ran into Frank at Twickham’s,” Nancy says, putting her bag down. “You’ll never believe who he was with.”

Bess’ chipper mood seems to deflate. She chews once, twice, on the cereal bulging out her cheeks, then mutters: “Deirdre?”

Nancy’s eyes widen. “How did you know that?”

“George told me about it,” Bess admits. She sounds ashamed, like a child with her hand caught in the candy stash.

“ _George_ knows? How?”

“Well. They all live in New York. And they kind of hang out sometimes.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I know, I know, we all had the same reaction at first, but—Deirdre’s changed! I think she might have actually grown up,” she says, sounding scandalized. “She’s not such an epic brat anymore. I think Frank might’ve helped with that.”

“Did he,” Nancy says, feeling a little hollow inside.

“I mean, she’s still not my favorite person, but George said she really grew out of that horrible person phase.”

Nancy can hardly believe what she’s hearing. What kind of world is this where George is vouching for Deirdre’s strengths as a human being? How does George even know in the first place?

“Are her and George… friends now?”

“I wouldn’t say _friends_ ,” Bess is quick to say—perhaps too quick. “But I think they see each other occasionally?”

“Uh huh,” Nancy says. Bess isn’t great at lying. Nancy would be annoyed if she didn’t know Bess was resorting to it only to spare her feelings.

“Anyway,” Bess says, eager to shift topics. “Did you find some painkillers?”

Nancy’s interrupted by her phone buzzing in her pocket before she can answer. She grabs it just as another text message bings in.

**Ned @ 9:48pm:** Miss you <3

**Ned @ 9:49pm:** How’s Bess’ place?

**Ned @ 9:49pm:** Apartment is so empty without you.

Nancy can’t quite keep the groan in her throat at bay. As much as she appreciates the concern, Ned’s timing could not be worse. She has bigger fish to fry today than Ned moping around an empty apartment staring at her spot on the sofa. For instance, the fact that she can’t even remember _where_ that apartment is or what it looks like, despite it being hers.

“Something wrong?” Bess asks.

“Just… Ned.”

“Oh. He giving you a hard time?”

More like the opposite. Ned is so saccharinely sweet that it loops all the way around from _soft_ to _being clubbed over the head_. She stuffs her phone away again, not prepared to deal with all that so soon. She’s still trying to process what just happened at the pharmacy and isn’t sure she has the emotional capacity to handle Ned’s woes right now too without digging into her reserves.

“Bess, last I remember, we had just broken up. This is all just a little… overwhelming.”

Bess winces, clearly sympathetic but at a loss as to what to say to improve the situation. Nancy isn’t sure she would be able to do any better if the roles were reversed.

“Sorry,” she says. “Any chance a cheesy Christmas movie would make this all better?”

Nancy shrugs. “It’s worth a shot.”

A grin breaks out over Bess’ face. “Great! ‘Cause there’s one on tonight about a high-strung lawyer who comes home for the holidays and reconnects with her old flame, the Christmas tree farmer.”

“That… can’t be real.”

“It is!” Bess says, already putting the cereal box away and rinsing her bowl out in the sink. “And you’re going to love it.”

\--

Unsurprisingly, the airport is packed when Bess and Nancy go to pick up George. It is, after all, traveling season, and it’s only going to get worse from here on out. Nancy dreads to think of how loud and uproarious the place will be given a week.

Next to her stands Bess, complete with a large pink poster she decorated with glitter to say, in letters that had nearly run out of room: _WELCOME HOME GEORGE!_ The E in ‘home’ is awkwardly cramped, but the message is clear nonetheless. It isn’t until they’re checking the arrival board for George’s flight number that Nancy realizes just how much she misses her.

“Oh, there she is,” says Bess, lifting the sign high. “George! Over here!”

George comes out surrounded by a wave of harrowed travelers. She looks remarkably put together in a bomber jacket, slim jeans, sneakers, and a shorter, sharper haircut than Nancy remembers—more grown-up, she realizes later is the descriptor she was looking for. George catches sight of the giant pink poster and looks suddenly trapped between exasperation and fondness.

“Hey guys,” George says, gathering them both in hugs. “Good thinking with the sign. I mean, how else could I have ever hoped to recognize you?”

“Hey, it took a lot of love and effort to make it!” Bess says.

“Yeah, yeah.” George pulls back from the hug, hitching her duffel higher up her shoulder. “How are you guys doing?”

“Depends,” Bess says. She looks like she’s positively overflowing with the need to tell George the entire story. “Do you want the long answer or the short answer?”

George frowns. “There’s a long answer?”

“Let’s wait with that until we’re back at your place, Bess,” Nancy cuts in.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Bess admits. She wheels on George’s measly duffel bag. “Is that one bag the only luggage you have?!”

George shrugs. “You know I travel light.”

That sounds like something Nancy would expect George to say, and the comfort of that is oddly soothing. George is equal parts a familiar constant and new territory; as much as she’s still _George_ , she’s also George from three years later, complete with experiences and personality changes Nancy’s oblivious to.

The walk to the car is familiar. It takes a few minutes for Nancy to realize it reminds her of when she—three years ago slash a few days ago slash the concept of time is little more than play-doh at this point—picked up Frank and Joe at the airport. The only difference is that instead of Joe rambling about a case, it’s Bess grilling George for details about how cute the guys in New York are. From George’s perpetually rolled eyes, this isn’t the first time Bess has pressed such a topic.

“So what’s been going on around here?” George asks as they trudge through the parking lot to Bess’ car. There’s a bit of leftover snow on the ground, tinged brown from mud on the sides, but George seems unfazed. She must deal with much worse in New York.

“ _Everything_ ,” Bess moans. “You have no idea.”

“Bess,” Nancy warns. By now, even getting to the car without Bess vomiting Nancy’s story all over the place seems unlikely.

“I know, I know.”

“All right, now I _have_ to hear what’s going on,” George says.

“Soon,” Nancy says.

Nancy spots Bess’ car, easily overlooked where it’s jammed between two pick-ups. George throws her duffel in the trunk and climbs into the backseat, leaning her elbows on the shoulders of the front seats as Bess and Nancy slide in too. It really is eerily reminiscent of how she sat in the car with Frank and Joe just a few days ago. 

She refuses to say _years_ ago at this point.

“Did someone die? Did someone get fired?” George asks, voice gaining momentum. “Did someone get arrested?”

“What? No, George, nothing that bad,” Nancy says. Her eyes fall on Bess, who’s suddenly inordinately fascinated with fiddling with the radio as the car rumbles to life. “At least—I don’t think it’s that bad.”

“Okaaaay,” George says slowly. “So neither of you has less than six months to live?”

“George! Why so morbid!” Bess cries. “It’s nothing like that.” She lands on a Christmas station, and Mariah Carey starts crooning through the speakers. “Now tell us about you! What’ve you been up to?”

George squints at them both, clearly suspicious. Nancy had almost forgotten that George likes solving a mystery—or rather, can’t leave one alone—just as much as Nancy does.

She relents for now, though, and starts talking about the latest cockroach infestation her apartment has been dealing with, Bess cringing all the while.

\--

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” George says two hours later on Bess’ sofa. “You can’t remember the last three years, but you’re medically sound, and you haven’t had any weird head injuries lately?”

“Sounds about right.”

She turns to Bess, eyes beady with suspicious speculation. “And you’re not pranking me for a good laugh?”

“No!” Bess says, indignant. “This is the real deal. I thought so too at first, but this really is happening. It’s _freaky_.

“I know how it sounds, George,” Nancy says, sighing. This conversation, already excruciatingly long in its necessary explanations and Bess’ obsession with adding in as many details as she reasonably can, is starting to exhaust her. “But trust me—I’m not joking.”

George fixes her with a long, probing look, the kind of look that Nancy would buckle under if she were lying just for the sake of having a bit of fun at George’s expense. The fact that everyone, in turn, is under the impression that they’re being pranked would be amusing if the situation wasn’t so dire.

“All right,” George says, although she looks a little unsettled by having to accept this abnormality. “Let’s approach this as rationally as we can.”

“Oh, and she knows about Frank and Deirdre,” Bess mumbles, as if hoping Nancy can’t quite hear her.

“She does?” George asks, visibly paling. “How?”

“I guess even the me you guys are familiar with doesn’t know about that?” Nancy asks.

George and Bess exchange quick looks of cousin telepathy.

“We just thought it wasn’t all that important,” George says.

“Not worth sharing, really,” Bess says, voice high.

Their lying is pathetically easy to spot. Nancy would pursue this vein of conversation if she didn’t feel like they have more important things to deal with right now. Still—in what world would the love life of Frank Hardy and Deirdre Shannon of all people not be worth sharing?

Nancy takes in a deep breath, bracing herself more than she intends to. “Are they serious?”

George and Bess share another wordless conversation via a quick glance.

“I don’t really spend enough time with them to know,” George says, more to the wall slightly left of Nancy’s face than her actual eyes. “But that’s not really important right now. Your crisis is what we should be focusing on.”

Nancy can’t really argue there. George has grown, she observes. Something about the way she’s sitting there right now, all poise and determination, makes her look like a force to be reckoned with. Nancy can easily imagine her among the bustle of New York, waving pollution aside as she navigates the streets with the practiced ease and speed of a local.

Still—a part of Nancy can’t help but think that she always thought she would the one to leave River Heights in pursuit of a bigger, more demanding city, not George. It’s not quite jealousy, but it still pricks her gut like syringes.

George leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Okay, we can fix this.”

“How?” Bess howls. “Trust me, George, I’ve been brainstorming, but this seems a little bit out of our hands.” She leans in, nearly conspiratorial. “This is the universe trying to send Nancy a message.”

“And what message is that?” asks George. “Watch your head?”

“Guys. I really haven’t suffered any knocks to the skulls lately.”

“As far as you remember,” says George. She squints. “What _is_ the last thing you remember?”

“Frank,” Bess fills in cheerfully.

George’s eyebrows make a leap for her hairline. “Really?”

“Well—sort of,” Nancy hurries to say before everyone gets the wrong impression and starts thinking that Frank is the key to all this. If that were the case, they’d probably have to bring Frank into this, and—well. Nancy has a feeling that he wouldn’t like that all too much. “But stuff happened after that. I went home, I had some food, I fell asleep.”

“That’s it?” George asks.

“That’s it,” Nancy says, and then— “Wait. There was that gift I got from P.G. Krolmeister.”

“That wacky inventor guy who makes everyone’s TVs and microwaves?”

“It was a package my dad had left for me on my bed,” Nancy says as more and more details start catching up to her. There were a _lot_ of packing peanuts, she remembers that much. And the box was fairly large. “Inside was this—this device. Brand new, just a prototype. He had sent it to me as a Christmas present.”

“What did it look like? Did it do anything?” George presses, eager.

“I don’t know. I kind of fiddled around with it and went to bed.” She tries to remember some of the details. “It was pretty large. Made of metal. Very heavy, too.”

“Woah. Nancy, maybe it’s responsible for all of this,” Bess says, sounding simultaneously awed and spooked.

“How? How would that even be possible?”

“Krolmeister is always inventing crazy stuff!” Bess is quick to point out. “Maybe it had a laser in it that _wiped_ your brain. Like in Men in Black.”

“Or maybe it was full of some kind of harmful radiation that tampered with the memory part of your mind,” George adds in.

“Or it really did send you into the future!” Bess says, eyes getting wider by the second.

“ _Guys_.”

George shifts in her seat. Nancy knows that this means she’s horribly restless because she wants to check this damn thing out already. “Where might you have kept it? Your bedroom in your dad’s house? Or maybe your dad’s attic?”

“Only one way to find out.”

\--

Nancy _really_ needing to remind her dad to dust in not-often-frequented corners of the house more often seems to be the takeaway from this so far unsuccessful search party throughout the Drew house, she thinks as she waves airborne lint away from her nose. The attic, especially, is one of the biggest culprits, as well as the basement and all the storage closets.

“Nancy,” Bess says, lifting an electric bottle opener from an unassorted pile of things scooped up together into a box. “What exactly are we looking for here?”

“Definitely something bigger than that,” Nancy says. “Much, much bigger.”

Bess repeats the words to herself in a mumble as a reminder as she goes diving into the next box. Through the haze of the dust particles, Nancy can hardly make out what’s around them, as if they’re all standing in a field on a particularly foggy day.

“I don’t know, Nan,” says George. “I think we’re out of luck. Nothing here matches the description you gave us.”

“I’m starting to come to the same conclusion,” Nancy says. The outlook is looking depressingly gray again after that little spark of hope they had just found. If she could just see that machine one more time, really investigate it to see if their hypothesis might actually be more than a conspiracy theory...

“Maybe Krolmeister has another? You should reach out to him.”

“Good idea, George,” Nancy says. She stands up, brushing dust off her knees and watching it swirl and dance in the air in front of her. “I bet I still have his number.”

She climbs down from the attic to check while George and Bess sift through the boxed remains. Nancy’s hope is starting to wither away into unease, an unsettling worry gathering in her stomach that’s consumed by the idea that they won’t be able to find a solution here.

No, none of that. She can’t fall prey to pessimism now. She has to remember her goal, and work toward it, and achieve it just like every other time an unsolvable case came her way. And calling Krolmeister is a good place to begin (after all those false starts from up in the attic). 

Luckily, his number is still in Nancy’s contacts when she pulls out her phone. She presses call and waits, heart lodged in her throat.

“Hey, ND! It’s been a while.”

A certain amount of relief that he picked up at all washes over her. “It sure has. How have you been doing?”

“Oh, you know how it goes. New invention here. Even better invention there. A never ending cycle, really.”

“Great. Listen,” Nancy begins, eager to get to the point. “Do you by any chance remember a device you sent me three years ago? A prototype?”

“ND, you really expect me to remember every bit or bob I’ve worked on over the years?”

“Well, no, but I was really hoping you’d remember this one,” she says. “It was silver, kind of shaped like an engine. You sent it to me as a gift.”

“Uh huh. And what did it do, exactly?”

“Well, that’s the bit I wanted to ask you about. I’m not sure what it did. Or what it was supposed to do, really.”

“ND, what a machine does and what it’s supposed to do should always, always be the same thing. Unless it’s a fun addition, like that it happens to also dispense chocolate bars.”

“Okay, sure—what I really want to know is if you still produce it. Or even just have a spare lying around you could send me.”

“I’m afraid not,” he says, humming. “I believe I know what you’re talking about, but if I’m right, that was a failed experimental product we never decided to go through with. I don’t have one—and that’s probably a good thing. It definitely wasn’t ready for the market.”

“Tell me about it,” Nancy grumbles. “You’re sure you don’t have an extra?”

“Unlikely. We gave that one the boot a long time ago. Probably cleaned it out of the warehouse by now.”

Dread wells up in Nancy’s gut. She knows all too well what it feels like to lose your main clue in a case.

“You don’t think you have any still around? Any at all?”

A heavy crash sounds in the background of the foreground. Krolmeister responds in kind with some loud lecturing, his attention clearly being drawn elsewhere. “Sorry, ND,” he says, breathless, a moment later. “Where were we?”

“The prototype you sent me,” she reminds him, impatience seizing her. “Do you maybe have an extra somewhere in storage?”

“Unlikely. It provided much too unreliable results for me to bother keeping it. And besides, I’ve moved on to bigger and brighter things! New inventions are just begging to be brought to life every day, you see?”

Nancy sighs, unable to match Krolmeister’s level of unfailing enthusiasm. Her one promising lead has gone stone cold, not because she’s disproved it, but because it’s escaped her entirely. Defeat washes over her like a bucket of too-hot water.

“Well, thanks for checking,” Nancy says. “Can you let me know if you happen to find it?”

“Sure, sure,” Krolmeister says, but he already seems to be erring on the side of distracted. “Listen, ND, I have to get going. I have a Shark Tank interview I need to get ready for.”

“You’re… bringing your inventions to Shark Tank?”

“Nonsense! They’re approaching me to be a shark, of course!” Krolmeister says, scoffing. “Anyway! I don’t have time to waste. I’ll be in touch!”

With that, the call ends.

The conversation did little to clear up the air. Nancy had hoped—foolishly optimistically—that all the answers laid with P.G., and that naturally, all the solutions would as well.

She’s starting to think she’s misjudged the severity of the situation.

She returns to the attack in low spirits. Bess and George are still sifting through a few cardboard boxes, but they turn away from the task, eager, when Nancy reappears.

“Any luck?” George asks.

Nancy sets her palms on the dusty table in the center of the attic, trying not to focus on how bleak the outlook is. “No,” she says.

“Well, let’s look on the bright side,” George says after a heavy silence fills the air. “We might have been wrong about the cause. Maybe it wasn’t the device from Krolmeister.”

Bess makes a huffed noise. “What are you saying, George? That Nancy’s just gone insane?”

“No!” George says quickly. “Just... that it might be something else. Maybe it’s not a piece of technology, or even an object.”

Bess gasps. “You’re right! It could be a curse. Or a voodoo spell. Or an ancient spell cast on you by a bad guy who you’ve put away that got his hands on some occult research material.”

“Bess.”

“I’m just saying, the situation’s already plenty crazy. Are we really going to draw the line before witch hexes?”

“We definitely have to draw it somewhere,” George mutters.

\--

They return to Bess’ apartment after an hour more of half-hearted searching, although morale has gone down significantly by the time they’re leafing through little more than thumb-sized trinkets. The machine Nancy remembers was gigantic, not something easily squirreled away in a shoebox, and definitely not something that could be hidden for long. The drive back to Bess’ place is full of untouched tension, none of them having come up with any solid plans.

“Don’t worry,” George says that night with startlingly persuasive confidence as they tug the pull-out couch in Bess’ living room into its full capacity. “We’ll figure it out. One of us will have that a-ha moment, just like always.”

“You seem very certain of that,” Nancy says, wishing she could feel as sure. She isn’t usually this pessimistic, but the circumstances are forcing her to abandon blind hope for realism. “What if we can’t work it out?”

“Found the extra blankets!” Bess exclaims from the doorway.

She heads for the couch, stepping over some of the shoes strewn about on the way. One of the blankets in Bess’ hands is patterned with felt snowmen, the other with cats in sunglasses. She hands both to George.

“Bess, you still have this one?” George asks, astonished, as she holds up the former. “You were still counting your age in single digits when you got it.”

“Hey! It’s cute!” She yanks the blanket back, indignant. “You’d rather freeze in this cold, icy December night?”

George rolls her eyes. It’s starting to feel more and more like a sleepover, Nancy has to admit, like the ones they used to have as teenagers. At the time, there had been lots of cookie making, premature cookie dough eating, and Bess bemoaning boys and bad dates, a realm of discussion Nancy could never contribute much to. Her and Ned’s dates were always pleasant. Then again, her and Ned rarely went on dates to begin with.

“All right,” Bess says, having relinquished the blanket. “Let me know if you guys need anything. And if anyone else is craving a Yule Log right about now, just say the word and we can jump into the kitchen.” She smiles, impish. “Anyone? No? Just me, then?”

“Goodnight, Bess,” George says firmly. “We will see you in the morning.”

She yanks the blanket around her shoulders and closes her eyes, definitively putting an end to that conversation.

Bess huffs. “Fine.” She stops in the doorway to shoot them a look of warning. “No gossiping about the good stuff without me.”

“We’ll be good,” George says. She turns to Nancy, conspiratory, as Bess shuts the door. “I always miss her so much… until I actually see her and remember why I left.”

Nancy smiles. “You sure New York was far away enough?”

George huffs out a sad little sigh. “All jokes aside, it _is_ hard, being so far away. So I hope you’ll forgive me for… conspiring with the enemy, if you will.”

“You mean Deirdre?”

The ensuing red on George’s cheeks is almost hidden in the low light. “Yeah.”

Nancy shifts under the blanket, suddenly a bit too warm. She doesn’t have the faintest idea how to materialize her feelings on the matter, probably because they’re too jumbled and too juvenile to explain without feeling awfully embarrassed. It isn’t the she wants George to only be friendly with people on a Nancy-approved list, or that there’s anything severely wrong with Deirdre—aside from a harmless mean streak—that should keep George away from her for her own well-being. It’s just that in the past, all of Nancy and George and Bess’ friends and acquaintances fell into the same pool, and all their opinions on them were overlapping Venn diagrams of agreement too. Now that same pool has widened, and the opinions have spread, and their identities have changed in the small, subtle ways that happens through growing up.

Nancy probably wouldn’t be taking this so hard if it had been a gradual occurrence, something to get used to gradually, like easing into cold water. For her, everything is a cannonball into the deep end right now.

“George, Deirdre’s not my enemy,” she says. “She may not be my favorite person, but I don’t mind if you’re friends with her.” Nancy fiddles with the edge of the blanket where the threads have frayed a little. “How did that happen, anyway?”

“Well… for a long time after I got to New York, the only people I knew where the Hardy boys. We ended up hanging out a lot, and at one point, Deirdre was just… part of the package, I guess. She would come along whenever I’d have lunch with Frank, and somehow, we ended up getting along.”

“She’d come along to your lunches with Frank?”

George chuckles. “I suspect she thought I was keeping tabs on him to report back to you. That, or she thought I wanted him for myself?” She shakes her head, as it mortified by the very prospect. “Although, she really would have to be blind to think that.”

Nancy tries to picture all four of them hanging out. The image is startlingly easy for her mind to put together. She imagines Frank and Joe in their city apartment, naturally messy but still comfortable, with shabby views of the New York skyline from the windows crowded by tall buildings and grimy alleyways, and a big couch in the center of it, Joe in the middle, George on his right, and Frank and Deirdre on the other end.

Would he put his arm around her? Would they press close, her arm slung over his middle?

Nancy tries to scrub the image from her brain. It doesn’t go easily, like she’s painted it with permanent marker.

A sharp stab of homesickness hits her.

“You really think we’ll figure this all out?” Nancy asks.

“Of course we will,” George says firmly. If there’s a crack in her confidence, Nancy doesn’t see it. “Remember when we figured out who kidnapped Bess? That was downright crazy, but we worked it out in the end.”

“Yeah, but this is even crazier.”

“Or maybe there’s a super simple explanation,” George says, cool as can be. She pulls the blanket up to her chest, leaning back against the cushions. “The doctors really didn’t find anything wrong with your head, huh?”

Nancy shakes her head. “Nothing.”

“Maybe it’s psychological, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I remember reading up once on something like that. Repressed memory syndrome, or something like that? It’s like a form of self-preservation. The brain chooses to forget things because of stress or trauma.”

That day in the library had certainly been stressful, but to the point of causing psychological damage? Nancy can’t quite justify her body reacting so strongly, but then again, she isn’t about to rule it out. It still makes more sense than pinning the entire situation on a paranormal curse or a voodoo doll with an agenda.

“You think I somehow managed to repress three years all because I had a bad afternoon?”

“I know it sounds far-fetched,” George agrees. “But then again, your whole story sounds far-fetched. Maybe out-of-the-box thinking is necessary in an out-of-the-box circumstance.”

For now, Nancy just wants to put the thinking box _away_. As it is, her brain is already swarming like an overworked beehive.

“Let’s pick this up tomorrow,” George suggests, clearly picking up on Nancy’s fatigue. “Maybe one good sleep is exactly what we all need to get to the bottom of this.”

\--

By the time the following morning rolls around, Nancy is still short on leads. She wakes with a protesting back—sleeping on a couch isn’t agreeing with her, it seems—and leftover dread in her stomach from the night before that they won’t be able to figure this out. The necessary clues just aren’t there, and it’s making Nancy uneasy.

Bess’ kitchen is in its usual state of disorganization when Nancy goes to prepare coffee for the morning, so she’s not too surprised when she opens up the pack of coffee and finds it empty, smelling faintly of ground beans.

Rousing Bess, who’s still snoring in her bed, seems like a silly choice. George is still heavily asleep too, needing to reenergize after her day of hectic travel yesterday. Nancy makes the decision to seek a caffeine fix elsewhere. If the town hasn’t changed too drastically from her memory of it, there’s a sweet little cafe in walking distance of Bess’ apartment with some of the flakiest pastries in the area. The fresh air can’t hurt either.

She finds the cafe easily enough. The exterior has changed a little—the brick is painted white now, and the sign seems to have been modernized—but the inside looks the same, bringing back memories of days when her and Bess would study for a test here and Bess would take routine muffin breaks.

The door jingles shut behind Nancy as she steps inside. The coffee shop is advertising Christmas flavors in full force, mint and cinnamon concoctions lined up on the menu, all accompaniments to the festive music playing overhead and the sprigs of holly on each table.

She’s never felt less full of the Christmas spirit in her life. No amount of garland or fairy lights is changing that for her, not now, not when she has the biggest mystery of her life in front of her. She gets in line and orders a cappuccino, wondering if a little caffeine will boost her investigative skills a bit.

She’s just having a hard time wrapping her head around the sheer ludicrousness of the situation. She’s dealt with the weird, and the improbable, but never something leaning so far in the area of impossible. All signs point to her own mental well-being being the perpetrator, which is as concerning as it is bizarre. Such brain damage wouldn’t be without headaches, dizziness, and bumps and bruises, all of which she’s without.

The last thing she vividly remembers is Frank, the memory of which is haunting her. Frank’s wide-eyed, crushed look from across that library table. Frank hastening to leave before Nancy could fully explain herself.

Frank, who is here now. Frank, who is staring at her from his spot in line at the cashier. Nancy feels color rush to her face.

He looks quickly away after being discovered, but his gaze returns to her soon after, clearly aware his cover’s been blown. Nancy wholly expects him to hurry to the door and leave, but instead, he pays for his coffee and approaches her table.

“Hi,” he says, sounding resigned.

“Hey.”

They stare at each other for one uncertain moment. Frank looks at her intently, like he wants to say something but can’t seem to either form the words or muster up the courage.

Nancy decides to break the silence first. “Do you want to sit with me?” she asks, gesturing to the chair across from her.

“Sure,” Frank says, sitting down. He wraps his hands around his cup, either to keep them warm or keep them busy, and sighs. “I think I owe you an apology.”

“What?”

“For the other day. At the drugstore. I didn’t mean to be so rude, you just—took me by surprise.”

“Oh. That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not—I just didn’t know what to say, really. It’s been a long time.” He draws in a deep breath. He doesn’t seem to let it back out. “You look great.”

A strange little flurry tingles to life in her stomach. “You do, too. So—grown-up.”

Nancy doesn’t realize how odd her comment comes off as until she hears it leave her mouth. Regardless, Frank laughs. “I guess we are, huh?” he says. “You’re working for the police now, right?”

She thinks so. She has no real confirmation, but she’s pretty sure, especially if McGinnis’ phone calls are any indication. “I am. Are you and Joe still working cases?”

“We are. Not for the Network anymore—more of our own thing.”

“Oh. That’s great.”

She smiles. He nods. Silence simmers between them like an uncomfortably hot pan of oil, leaving Nancy to wonder just when their conversations got so uncomfortable. They never were, at least not before.

“So. Um.” She fights for a topic to bring up, then remembers one that’s been itching at her to both ignore and resolve. The latter wins out. “You and Deirdre—”

“Nancy!” someone says. It’s the waitress, coffee pot in hand as she stops at their table. She looks terribly relieved to see her, and Nancy is horrified to realize, stomach swooping, that she has no idea who this woman is. “It’s so nice to see you.”

The mouthful of coffee Nancy swallows very nearly worms its way down the wrong pipe. “You, too,” she says. Her eyes flicker to the woman’s name tag, but the ink is smudged, rendering it illegible. For god’s sake. “How are you?”

“We’ve been better,” the waitress says. “But you of all people know all about that! Any updates on the case?”

“The case?”

The waitress nods, eyes very expectant. What case? The case she’s working on at the station? Or is this something she’s doing on the side pro bono? Is this a good friend of hers? Does the case have anything to do with her? The longer Nancy doesn’t reply, the more questions come swarming into her head until there’s a dust storm of unknowns there.

“The case,” Nancy repeats slowly. “Right. Well. No new updates yet.”

She sneaks a glance at Frank, who’s giving her an odd look. So much for hoping she’s pulling this off inconspicuously.

“Really?” says the waitress, clearly disappointed. “Well, I hope something comes up soon. Enjoy the coffee, folks.”

She gives them a tight smile and wheels away to refill another table’s cups, Nancy watching her retreating form with regret curdling in her mouth. Up until now, this memory loss has just been annoying, but now it’s starting to have repercussions with her work, her reputation.

“What was that all about?” Frank asks once the waitress is out of earshot.

“What?”

“Since when does Nancy Drew have no leads on a case?”

She sighs. There’s just no easy way to explain this, possibly because she doesn’t quite get it herself just yet.

“I don’t remember the case,” she admits. “I don’t remember her either. I’ve been having some, uh. Memory problems.”

“Memory problems?” Frank repeats. “Did you hit your head?”

“ _No_.” If someone asks her that even just one more time— “I don’t know what happened. But I have no clue what she’s talking about.”

“Oh. That’s… bad,” Frank says.

“Helpful.”

“I know, I know—I’m sorry, really. When did this start?”

“Recently.”

“Is it a temporary thing?”

If only she knew. She’s so completely out of her depth that it feels a bit like she’s deep-sea diving with an empty oxygen tank. 

“Maybe I can help,” Frank suggests. He turns around, flagging down the same waitress. “Hi there,” he says when she approaches their table. “Nancy was just telling me about the case she’s working on for you. I’d love to hear more about it from an insider's perspective, maybe get some details.”

“Frank’s a detective too,” Nancy adds. “One of the best.”

“I—really?” Frank looks at her.

“Of—of course,” Nancy says. She doesn’t mean to stutter around her words, but the awed look on Frank’s face takes her aback. Looking at him for too long feels like a bad idea, so Nancy turns hurriedly back to the waitress. “Anyway, back to the case.”

She nods, smoothing out her apron. “A few months ago, someone started sneaking in here and stealing supplies. Mostly just ingredients—sugar, coffee grounds, flour. Made a huge mess while they were at it.”

“You think someone’s stealing from the place? Or vandalizing it?”

“It’s hard to tell. Sometimes stuff is definitely missing, but the place is always a mess afterwards too.”

“Any sign of forced entry?” Frank asks.

She shakes her head. “No. It’s the strangest thing. All the locks are still in place when we open up the shop in the morning.”

Frank’s eyebrows are furrowed in deep thought. “This sounds a lot like a case I was asked to take down here as well,” he confides. “There’s a shop up the street that’s been missing stuff.”

“A case?” Nancy asks, suspicious. “I thought you came down here to spend Christmas with Deirdre’s family?”

Frank doesn’t meet her gaze, looking a bit sheepish. “Both just… happened to coincide.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m just doing a friend here a favor,” Frank says, very quickly, then changes the subject and turns back to the waitress. “What else has been happening?”

“That’s about it. The weird part is just that there isn’t any sign of entry whenever it happens. The doors are always locked up tight.”

Frank is nodding with growing fervor. “This all sounds super familiar. I think you and Pizza Palace have been hit by the same people.” He turns to Nancy, frown deep. His investigation face, Nancy thinks without meaning to. “Anyone come to mind with you?”

“Anyone looking to take out their competition,” Nancy says, glancing around the cafe. The place is nice, modern, and certainly entertains a large crowd. It wouldn’t surprise Nancy if someone wanted to eliminate their biggest competitors, especially such well-decorated competitors. A dash of a thought hits her. “Toni Scallari has been expanding her menu lately. More power smoothies, diet stuff.”

Frank’s eyes thin. “Isn’t she the one who wanted you framed for the arson around here?”

Nancy stares at him, startled. All those years, and he still remembers the little details about Nancy’s life. A peculiar little thrill runs through her, one she’s fairly certain she shouldn’t be indulging. She turns a blind eye to it instead, to the best of her ability.

“Yes. She’s not exactly a paragon of morality, that’s for sure.”

“That’s good subject material right there.”

Wrapping herself up in another case is exactly what she needs, Nancy thinks as she digs in her purse for a notepad and starts compiling a list of potential perpetrators. Mystery is something of a refuge for her, like knitting on the sofa might be for someone else.

Having Frank around isn’t exactly a drawback, either. If anything, if makes everything feel startlingly normal again, nearly how Nancy remembers it being. They used to be such an unstoppable team.

“How often do the break-ins happen? Is there a pattern?” Frank asks the waitress.

She shakes her head. “It’s completely random. But at least a few times a week.”

“Mm.” He stops, seems to consider the situation. His eyebrows are doing that _thing_ that Nancy remembers them doing all too well when he’s thinking hard on a problem, and then he turns to Nancy with resolute clarity. “All right, only one solution.”

“What is it?”

A hint of a smile touches his mouth. “Stakeout,” he says. “Catch the guy in the act. Or gal, if our suspicions are correct.”

“What, tonight?”

Frank shrugs. “Why not? If you have time, I mean.”

Nancy can only imagine that the alternative is sitting around a fire-lit hearth with Deirdre’s family while Mr. Shannon reads Dickens to everybody, Deirdre cuddled close to Frank all the while. The image feels so misplaced in Nancy’s brain, so resolutely wrong, that she has no problem accepting the offer.

“I have time,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

“Great!” Frank says. “Do you think you have more information about the case at the station?”

“Probably, but… if Chief McGinnis sees me there, he’d put me work immediately,” she says. “I told him I’m not feeling too good.”

“Oh.” A cautious, growing smiles grabs Frank’s face. “I can help with that.”

\--

So they sneak into the station. Sneak might not be the right word—after all, Nancy is an employee there and has all the necessary keys and codes to access any of the rooms or equipment, but it’s the part where she’s actively trying to hide from McGinnis that makes her feel like a kid digging around where she shouldn’t be again. It’s almost exciting. Detective work is almost more fun as an amateur, she thinks—as a professional, she’s _allowed_ to snoop around wherever she wants.

Frank, for his part, seems to be having just as much fun. “I’ll stand guard,” he whispers by the front desk, around the corner from McGinnis’ door. “I’ll distract him if he comes out. Go!”

“Got it.”

Nancy heads for the desks, which is when the plan promptly loses steam when she realizes she has no idea which desk is hers. The station’s expanded a little bit since three years ago, adding in more lockers and what looks to be an extra forensic lab. Nancy’s just about to start examining nameplates when she runs smack into—

“Detective Ryan!” Nancy says, surprised.

“Oh, hey, Nancy,” he says. Some of the papers he was holding have slipped out onto the floor, but he brushes her off with a goofy smile when she tries to help. Some people just stay the same, she thinks. “You doing okay? I heard you were taking some time off.”

“Oh. I am.” Oh, shoot. “I just, uh… came in to grab some things.”

“You’re not working on your vacation, are you?”

“Well, it’s not exactly a vacation.” She looks past his shoulder at McGinnis’ door, at the broad-shouldered silhouette moving around inside it. “I just need a few papers.”

She gives him a tight smile and turns away before he can keep the conversation going, eager to make this visit as short as possible to try and avoid McGinnis’ pre-caffeine wrath. She just needs to look up what she can on the coffeehouse case and go.

She ends up finding her desk through luck. A framed picture next to a computer monitor catches her eye, one of Togo, and she finds the NANCY DREW nameplate nearby, nearly hidden behind a propped up birthday card from Hannah. There are trinkets from Bess and George around too, photographs of all three of them from a photobooth at the summer fair in the drawer, but nothing from Ned is around.

It’s strange, because she knows for certain that Ned’s given her little crafts and gifts before that she could show off here at her desk.

She shakes her head, clearing away the thoughts. For now, she needs to focus; she can worry about Ned and his impact on her life later. The pressure of potentially being caught feels like there’s a ticking clock on her shoulder, its alarm set to go off unpredicted at any moment, and she hurries to open up files. Her documents are organized and well-sorted, but truly overwhelming in just how many there are, dozens upon dozens of reports to be scrolled through. She’s just in the middle of clicking through a few folders in the police’s database, starting to narrow down toward what she’s looking for, when the Chief’s door swings open.

Oh no. Nancy freezes, not sure what her plan is here on out—

“Chief McGinnis!” Frank’s voice, smothered in false surprise, rings out from around the corner. “It’s so nice to see you.”

“Frank? Frank Hardy?”

“Wow, it’s so great to run into you!” Frank says, with just a smidgen more enthusiasm than perhaps necessary, as he pulls the Chief into a hug and expertly starts maneuvering the two of them into his office.

He briefly catches Nancy’s eyes over McGinnis’ shoulder, and Nancy sees her opening. She hurries, clicking her way to the _Theft_ folders. If only she could remember the waitress’ _name_. It would make all this searching infinitely easier. She clicks blindly, desperately, through a few of the files.

_Petty theft at Barbara’s Beans; all cash stolen. Mugging outside Mabel Rose’s; criminal supposedly blond and confirmed male. Vandalism at Star Wares; gang found nearby and arrested within one hour._

No, no, no. None of this is right. Nancy keeps looking.

_Break-in at Pizza Palace. Recurring event; reported by two separate managers on different nights._

There!

Nancy hurries to print the file out. She finds another for the coffeeshop a few pages down, and in her skimming, notes it _does_ seem remarkably similar to Frank’s case. She highly doubts these two restaurants are the only ones to be affected, and on a hunch, she prints out a few more reports of other break-ins in the area. Her detective’s intuition is telling her this is all related, so she can only hope that tonight, the thief will target the cafe rather than a different establishment.

She rushes past McGinnis’ office just as she hears a bout of Frank’s overdone laughter. He’s good at many aspects of detective work, from the nitty-gritty logistics to the diversion techniques, and Nancy had nearly forgotten just how much of an asset he is on a case.

She doesn’t wait outside for too long, leafing through the fruits of her labor, before Frank appears.

“Looks like you got out okay,” he says, relieved. “I couldn’t exactly check to make sure without making McGinnis suspect something was up.”

“It worked out in the end,” Nancy says. “Since when are you and the Chief so chummy anyway?”

“Oh. That.” Frank smiles at a shrub that’s growing, in its lack of maintenance, up the side of the brick wall of the station. “Joe and I deal with him occasionally while working cases. He’s a nice guy. Always willing to lend a hand if he can.”

Nancy raises her eyebrows. “All of the police chiefs out there, and you choose one in a tiny town you have no real connection to?”

Frank stares harder at the shrub. “Well, I wouldn’t say no connection.” He lets out a defeated breath. “I met him once here when Joe and I visited you years ago. I called him a few months later because a case we were looking into sounded similar to one he told me about.” His first sigh morphs into yet another. “He told me that any friend of Nancy Drew was a friend of his. He helped me out without question.”

_Oh_. So they had talked about her. She had come up, and Frank had called her a friend. She’s not sure why something so banal is making her heart skip so quickly, but if this all took place within the last three years, Frank referring to Nancy with such genial terms is surely a good sign.

“So did you find what you wanted to?”

“Huh?”

Frank nods at the papers in her grip. “I assume you found useful information about the theft,” he explains. “Anything good?”

Nancy hands him the stack. That small conversation shouldn’t have had the power to push her brain on a coffee break, but here she is. “Take a look.”

Frank thumbs through the pages. He makes a few soft noises as he reads—little murmurs of understanding, hums of comprehension—before he hands them back to Nancy. He looks distinctly impressed.

“You’re thinking these are all related,” Frank concludes.

“I do.” Nancy’s about to ask just how he knows this when she looks down and realizes that the files she’d printed include notes added to the margins of the documents—her notes. At least, her notes from this world, this time period. Her head is starting to pound a bit, so she doesn’t look into it too deeply. What matters now is that she seems to have seen the connection between all these break-ins before, particularly when they occur, the mess the kitchen is left in afterwards, and how no entrances are ever forced or broken into. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re right. And if there are more restaurants in the area suffering here, we better get to the bottom of it fast.”

“We will, tonight,” Nancy promises.

In her pocket, Nancy feels her phone buzz. A text from Bess flashes on the screen: _George and I are making soup for lunch, you coming?_

“Something wrong?” Frank asks as Nancy thumbs the message open.

“Nothing’s wrong.” _I was just enjoying myself with you_ , Nancy thinks but doesn’t say. “Bess was just asking what my lunch plans are.” She leaves the text unanswered for now, glancing up at Frank. She acts on instinct. “Do you want to come?”

Frank seems surprised by the invitation. Hesitation visibly grabs him. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“...Right.” Nancy knows she shouldn’t be disappointed, but, well.

Frank sucks in a deep breath. In his coat, bundled up to his neck, and gloved hands, he looks warm enough, but his face is pink nonetheless. He rubs his forehead, as if considering a bad idea. Finally, he says, “You sure you’d want me there?”

“Yes,” Nancy says instantly. “Absolutely.”

Carefully, he smiles. “All right. I’ll come.”

\--

At first, Frank seems to be deceptively alone when he shows up half an hour later at Bess’ for lunch. And then Deirdre steps up from behind him.

“Deirdre,” Nancy says from where she’s holding the door open. “I didn’t expect you to be coming.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Deidre says. She steps loops her arm into Frank’s, eyes locked onto Nancy’s all the while. Her leather gloves and sleek trench coat make her look slightly like a Disney villain, but Nancy keeps that thought to herself. “But here I am anyway.”

“Yes,” Bess says, sliding up next to Nancy. Nancy is starting to feel disturbingly like she’s entered a Western showdown, and sides are being drawn.. “Here you are. Nice to see you, Deirdre.”

“Likewise.”

The two of them engage in a brief staring competition in which Nancy is pretty sure both of them are trying to lure secret powers to the surface that can smite the other. Finally, Bess seems to remember herself, and lunch, and the purpose of this intensely awkward meeting. She turns to Frank.

“Frank!” she says, brightening considerably. “I haven’t seen you in ages. You look great.”

“You do too,” Frank says. He even reaches out and gives her a hug, which Nancy supposes she should be pleased about, but it only stokes a fire of indignance inside her. She didn't get a hug.

George shows up with a dishtowel slung over her shoulder a moment later. She dispenses hellos and hugs to Frank and Deirdre both, Deirdre shooting a look at Nancy the entire time that seems to say _see? There isn’t anyone in your life I can’t steal away._

Nancy pushes the thought away and busies herself with stowing everyone’s coats while George talks about the soup, a hearty experiment full of carrots and leek and possibly too much salt. Frank says something about potatoes being able to draw the salt out of a dish and next thing Nancy knows, he’s in the kitchen, shoulder-to-shoulder with George, bending over the pot with her. They look like they've possibly done this before, perhaps in one of their apartments in New York, huddled over an oven or a fridge together, working out recipes.

They look perfectly comfortable, so Nancy wonders if anyone else can feel the awkwardness as strongly as she can, how it settles over the apartment like a thick, scratchy blanket. Aside from a few acidic glances from Deirdre, everyone else seems to be falling back into old habits with each other, a comfort Nancy has yet to reclaim with Frank and probably won’t with Deirdre, by Deirdre's own choosing.

Since when has Frank been good at cooking?

Nancy gets to work setting the table while Bess and Deirdre exchange frigid small talk that warms up slightly after Bess gets an eyeful of Deirdre’s shoes, the style of which Bess has been lusting after for months. Maybe even those two could find common ground one day.

“Nancy, you’ve got to try this!” George hollers from the kitchen doorway, waving a wooden spoon. “It’s delicious.”

Nancy comes up to the stove. A massive pot is bubbling away on the heat, full of every vegetable imaginable, plus the kitchen sink. Basically everything Bess had in her fridge near expiration date that needed to be cleared out to make room for Christmas treats. Nancy grabs a spoon from the cutlery drawer and gives it a try.

The soup is creamy, textured, flavorful, and seasoned to perfection. Frank’s potato trick clearly did the soup a favor; it’s just the right amount of saltiness.

“This is amazing,” she says. “Good job, um.” She looks at Frank, then George, unsure of where to submit her praise. “Both of you.”

“Hey!” Bess says, suddenly there too, hands on her hips. “I helped!”

“I don’t know, Bess,” George says. “Is sampling the work in progress every two minutes _helping_?”

“Joe would definitely say so,” Frank says. He has a wide, uninhibited smile on his face as he stirs the soup. For one terrifying moment, everything seems to be just as it once was—all of Nancy’s friends, joking together, laughing together—until Nancy remembers that that’s little more than an illusion.

“Come on, let’s eat,” George says, grabbing a ladle.

Everyone adjourns to the dining room, where Deirdre has already made herself at home fiddling with the table’s centerpiece: Bess’ Christmas decoration of choice, a large ceramic snowman painted in a pottery class she and George attended a few years ago. Nancy had been in Colorado at the time solving Niko Jovic’s murder, with the help of Frank and Joe, coincidentally.

They were always a steady rock of advice during her mysteries, never more than a phone call away. She can’t imagine how it must’ve been for her these last few years, never calling, never contacting them for Joe’s cheeky jokes or Frank’s protective concern.

Protective concern. He always _had_ been worried about her whenever Nancy mentioned the dangers of a case, more so than Joe, who was more of a vicarious adrenaline junkie than anything else whenever she shared stories of chasing tornadoes or taking down mafia rings. Now, it’s like everything Nancy looks back on is tinted in new shades, less of a person thinking of fond memories and more of a detective scouring the past for clues. Had Frank’s concern for her wellbeing always stemmed from… his feelings?

“All right, everyone dig in!” Bess says, gleeful at the sight of her creation, as the soup is doled out.

Nancy lets herself shelve her overthinking in favor of savoring the soup. She would be doing a better job of it, too, if she wasn’t constantly getting distracted by the company. Specifically, wondering if Frank’s hand is on Deirdre’s knee under the table.

Frank’s wearing an argyle sweater Nancy’s never seen him wear before. It fits him quite well, almost snugly. When did he buy this sweater? All the gaps in his life that Nancy hasn’t been privy to suddenly glare in her face like the flashing lights inside a haunted house.

“Tastes like… winter squash, a little bit,” Frank says, appreciative, as he lifts the spoon to his mouth.

“I bought one, like, a week ago and had no idea what to do with it,” Bess admits. “So in the pot it went!”

“It’s better than I expected coming from you, Marvin,” Deirdre says, which is about as close as Deirdre gets to a compliment. She delicately wraps her thumb around her spoon and turns to Nancy, and something in her demeanor makes it clear that compliment time is over. “So,” she says. Her fingers are white around her cutlery. “I heard you guys are going on a stakeout tonight.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Nancy chances a glance at Frank. “Kind of like old times.”

“Old times,” Deirdre repeats with a voice that sounds like it’s a knife that’s just been precisely sharpened. “It’s been a while for you guys.”

“Well, our cases sort of intersected,” Frank explains. “It just made sense to work together.”

“The only one missing is Joe,” Nancy says, going for light-hearted but coming out a little wistful. “How’s he doing?”

“Fine. Working harder than you think he would. Our cases these days put a lot of pressure on him, but he does a good job.”

Nancy knows he does. All of his joking aside, he was always a dedicated detective. Having him on her side was a boon she can’t believe she took for granted.

The conversation lulls into clinking silverware and soft slurping. George occasionally pipes up to ask a few things, but her questions, even though they’re perfectly mundane, feel oddly like inside jokes, like little things that only her, Frank, and Deirdre truly understand, like complaints about their favorite New York bakery shutting down, or commiserating over how hard it was to fly out of JFK this time of year. It doesn’t help that Deirdre keeps interjecting these sweet little nicknames she’s made up for Frank—Frankwin, Frankstephor, Frankson—like she used to do for Ned. Bess is too wrapped up in her food to care too much, but Nancy cares. Nancy feels like a fifth wheel, like something that’s dropped out of the boot of the car miles ago and was forgotten.

“So Nancy,” Deirdre starts up again. Nancy can’t quite pin down the dominant emotion in her voice. Jealousy? That doesn’t seem like an accurate diagnosis. “How are you and Ned doing?”

“Oh. We’re okay,” Nancy says. “We, uh. We live together now.”

She’s not sure what compels her to say it, other than a strange desire to watch Frank’s reaction. His eyes widen, but so imperceptibly that it’s hard to say if Nancy imagined it.

“That’s nice. You haven’t dragged him down into your nerdhood yet, I hope.”

George snorts into her drink. “Ned’s a nerd even without Nancy’s help,” she says. “But that’s… part of his charm, right, Nance?”

“Right,” Nancy says.

“I thought you guys were broken up the last time I was in River Heights,” Deirdre comments. “I have to say, I didn’t think you guys would become an on-again-off-again couple. That’s very reality TV show of you. I’m almost impressed.”

“Sometimes people don’t realize they’re meant to be together until they spend some time apart,” Frank says. Is that a sad lilt to his smile, or is Nancy just looking for hints in his expression now?

“Well, I say,” Bess says loudly. “Everyone’s gotta sow their wild oats a little. No harm in sampling the fish buffet, if you know what I mean.”

“Any chance that was an excerpt from your podcast?” Deirdre asks. “Bess Marvin’s Tips To Be Single?”

“I think that was meant to be a jab, but I’m taking it as a career idea anyway.”

Nancy stifles her laughter in her hand. When she looks up, Frank’s laughing too, and catches her eye. It feels like they’re finally in on a joke together rather than just both looking at it from the outside, far away from each other, right up until—

Deirdre grabs Frank’s hand on the table and curls hers into it.

“Anyway,” George says, steering the conversation back on track. “Anybody have any exciting developments going on lately?”

The conversation totters on until everyone’s gone for seconds and finished up, wavering between moments of awkward silences and backhanded compliments from Deirdre, interspersed with somewhat pleasant small talk. Once weather comes up as a topic, Nancy grabs a couple empty bowls to start cleaning up, unable to look at Deirdre idly playing with Frank's hand anymore.

Frank follows suit. Nancy feels herself prickle with discomfort as they set the dishes in the sink, feeling as though she needs to fill the room with conversation—at least better conversation than whatever was going on out there—but is grasping at what to say. It’s not a feeling she’s ever had with Frank before, but then again, this isn’t the Frank she knows, not really. This Frank and this Nancy are out of touch with each other, out of practice.

She looks at Frank just in time to see him hurriedly looking aside before being caught staring at her.

“Nice job with saving the soup,” she says. “It was great.”

“Oh, thanks. Compliments should really go to George and Bess, though. It was their creation.”

“When did you take up cooking?”

“Um. About a year ago.” He smiles at the sink, laughing at something Nancy can’t touch. “It actually started just to make sure that Joe ate a vegetable every once in a while. If it were up to him, he’d eat fast food all the time.”

“That sounds like him,” Nancy says, hoping it’s all right for her to. It’s not like she really knows Joe anymore these days either. “Actually, it sounds like Bess too. I don’t think she’d eat anything but sweets during Christmastime without supervision.”

That earns Nancy a chuckle, and hearing it feels disconcertingly like hitting the jackpot.

“Hey, guys,” Bess says from the doorway, holding the last batch of dirty dishes. There’s a strange mischievous smile on her face. “‘Tis the season, right?”

“...huh?”

Bess looks pointedly upward. Nancy follows her line of sight.

There’s a mistletoe on the ceiling.

“Oh.” Nancy’s audible swallow can probably be heard from outer space. She looks at Frank, who’s frozen—gone catatonic, perhaps—as if the mistletoe is a predator that hasn’t spotted him yet. He spares one look at Nancy, quickly averts his gaze, clears his throat, and steps aside like how one might step back from an oozing puddle of bodily fluids.

“Deirdre and I should really be going,” Frank says in a voice slightly deeper than normal.  
“Bess, thank you for the food. Nancy, I’ll see you later tonight.”

He bustles past them like a man chased. Nancy looks up at the mistletoe, glinting on the ceiling like a villain, and resists the irrational urge to yank it down.

“Bess!” she hisses. “What on earth are you doing?”

She shrugs, all too innocent. “I was just trying to, you know… nudge, nudge, nudge.”

“ _Nudge_?”

“You know! The two of you!” Bess rolls her eyes, like Nancy is severely behind. To be fair, Nancy is behind on a lot, but she’s freakishly on top of this particular subject; she’s been thinking about Frank nonstop for days. “Come on. You’re telling me you seriously never thought about kissing Frank before?”

Nancy shakes her head, rendered mute. She hasn’t, but she is definitely is _now_. Frank’s a handsome man who Nancy knows has had girlfriends before, which logically implies he’s kissed someone before, and perhaps might be good at it. He certainly has the hands for it, that would undoubtedly gingerly hold her by the cheeks. And the mouth, never too chapped or wet or over-licked. And there’s just that _considerate air_ about him.

Nancy feels herself go hot. As far as she knows-slash-remembers, she’s only ever kissed one person before: Ned. Leaving her with very little frame of reference. All she can truly say is that Ned is a… pleasant kisser.

Would Frank be better? Gentler? Rougher? More passionate? More ardent?

Bess has an evil grin on her face. “You’re thinking about kissing him now, aren’t you?”

“No,” Nancy is fast to say.

“Come on, Nan!” Bess needles. She pinches Nancy’s arm through her sweater. “What if… all of this that’s been going on is to push you toward Frank?”

“What?”

“The whole weird, unexplainable time travel thingy. Where the last thing you remember is rejecting Frank? And now you’re here, watching Frank be with someone else? And that someone is _Deirdre freaking Shannon_?” Bess pokes Nancy on the elbow. “I know I’m no hotshot detection, but doesn’t it feel like the two might be connected?”

Nancy doesn’t know. Bess’ argument is frighteningly compelling, but that would be absurd. She’s sent forward in time to be tormented by the repercussions of her saying no to Frank’s coffee date?

“I…” She grabs the bowls from Bess’ hands, busying herself with arranging them in the sink for washing. “I can’t think about that right now. I have to focus on tonight’s operation.”

“Uh huh,” Bess says, much too knowingly.

“I’ll consider it later,” Nancy says, which is a horrible lie, and also a horrible thing for a detective to do. Willfully ignore evidence. Voluntarily refuse to look into a lead. 

But in this case, the lead is her own feelings, and her own heart, and her own nebulous emotions, still untapped, on this entire Frank ordeal. It’s easier when the only feelings she has to consider are those of her suspects. Putting herself under the microscope is… a lot.

She mumbles something about needing to look over the case files, and removes herself from Bess’ beady gaze.

\--

Frank and Nancy agree to meet outside of the cafe at nine o’clock, right after the last employee has closed up shop. Nancy’s sitting in a car—Bess’ car, actually, thanks to its inconspicuous appearance that Nancy’s bright blue roadster could never live up to, even in the dark—strategically angled a few meters away from the back door, hidden by shadows and the largest trees in the parking lot. The scent tree hanging from the mirror makes the entire car smell subtly of strawberries, a calming smell Nancy would probably appreciate more if she wasn’t so stressed.

She knows fully well that tonight is her best chance to make things right, to steer the detailed train that is her and Frank’s friendship back on the right tracks. These last few days—seeing him, but not really being allowed to talk to him, laugh with him, spend time with him—has felt like a cruel punishment.

Has she really taken Frank for granted that much? Now that she’s being denied his genuine grins and his sharp mind and his infinite kindness and his supportive friendship and his cute vests, Nancy feels the loss of the magic he used to have on her life, and it sits upon her heavily, like weighted stones.

Not for the first time since waking up in this parallel dimension of her world, Nancy has to ask herself: what exactly was she saying no to when Frank asked her out?

A tap on her window jolts her out of her thoughts. It’s Frank, dimly illuminated by the streetlights. Nancy unlocks the car doors.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says as he climbs in. “I brought snacks, if it’s any consolation.”

He slides two coffees into the cup holders and grabs a bag of chips out from underneath his elbow, passing them to her. Raging Infernos. Her favorite. Something inside her feels a little bruised.

“Thanks,” she says.

“I’ve got the sweet stuff covered too,” Frank adds, pulling some cudsmackers out from his pocket. “I figured we might as well do this whole stakeout business right.”

He’s smiling as he unloads his loot into the cup holders. “Any chance you learned all this from Joe?”

“Hey, Joe might be a little obsessed with a good burger, but he’s not the only one who can appreciate good snacks.” He pulls a few boxes of Raging Infernos out last, shaking one in Nancy’s direction. “In the mood for something spicy?”

She can’t help but smile. “Sure.”

She digs in and tosses a few in her mouth, listening to the box rattle as Frank shakes a few out onto his palm as well. She knows it’s rude to keep trying to sneak glances like this, but Nancy can’t help but focus her eyes in on Frank’s new look, new clothes. He looks markedly different, but simultaneously still so familiar. Even though she recalls their friendship far more clearly than he does right now, it still feels like she’s discovering the pages of an old book, found again after many years, the story familiar and unfamiliar all at once.

“So what’ve you been working on here? Any interesting cases at the police department?”

Nancy saves herself a few moments by shoving a few chips into her mouth. “A few. I’m working on one right now—but not for the police.”

“A personal case?”

A little too personal, if you ask her. “You could say that.” She exhales slowly. “There’s just a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense. I can’t figure it out.”

“Can you tell me more about it, or not really?”

“Not really,” she says, withholding a wince. “Uh—it’s just a bit confidential, that’s all.”

“I get it. Some clients are like that, wanting everything all locked up.” If Frank’s hurt that he’s not in on the details, he does a good job of covering it up. Then again, he’s covered up a lot of stuff that Nancy’s never picked up on. Maybe she can’t read him as well as she thought she could. “How much can you tell me?”

She shifts, uncertain. “Well. There’s something… sort of unexplainable going on here. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Frank snorts. “Nothing’s actually unexplainable when you’re on the case,” he says. “You always figure out what’s actually going on.”

Maybe not this time, she thinks grimly.

She grabs another handful of candy, the fiery kick of the cinnamon the exact kind of distraction she needs. She chews and chews and can’t help but think of how few leads her and Bess and George have turned up, running mostly into dead ends. If Frank and Joe were on the case, that’d be two extra brains—great brains, at that—but even if they _would_ want to help, she has no idea how she’d go about explaining it all. Even George and Bess give her the strangest looks sometimes, not that Nancy blames them. More and more, she tends to blame her own head, some memory-altering disease or bump on the skull she doesn’t remember.

Besides, Frank and Joe are busy now. They have real work to do, not just pro bono favors for their estranged friend. Especially Frank, who has bigger fish to fry, like what to get Mrs. Shannon for Christmas.

The thought makes her brain abruptly switch tracks. It’s unpleasant to think about, no matter how many times she tries to get used to it. Deirdre and Frank are together. They’re a couple. An item. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, they found each other and decided to stick together, for reasons Nancy can’t begin to fathom. She wants to ask, almost as much as she desperately doesn’t want to hear the answers.

It’s ludicrous. She’s always had no problems hitting people with the hard questions, regardless of if she was happy with the responses. And Frank’s not a suspect, he’s a _friend_. Talking to him is easy.

At least, it always was.

“So,” Nancy says. “You and Deirdre.”

Frank heaves a breath inward. He looks like he’s been expecting the question. Considering she never got to finish it in the coffeeshop, he might’ve seen this one coming.

“Me and Deirdre,” he says. He seems a tad uncomfortable to be having this conversation, stiff in the shoulders. “She’s a great person.”

It feels oddly like the jagged end of a paper clip is poking Nancy in the chest. She tries to ignore it. “How did you two even…?”

“She came to New York to finish up her degree. She had some criminology assignment that brought her to dad’s station, and I happened to be there that day. When I realized I recognized her, we got to talking.”

Nancy bites back the urge to ask what happened next. She’s not sure why she’s being so nosy; it’s just inconceivably hard for her to wrap her head around how any of this even _happened_. How did it possibly go from a quick chat at the station to visiting her family for Christmas? 

“And so you're… happy,” Nancy says slowly.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Right.”

An uncomfortable silence descends between them, thick with something unspoken that’s lingering in the air regardless. Maybe she’d be better at all this if she knew the background, if she really did have three years to get used to her and Frank becoming strangers. As it is, all she remembers are the good bits, how sturdy their friendship was, how well they got along.

“Nancy. I was thinking—”

A shadow arching around the corner snatches her attention away. Nancy grabs Frank’s arm, gasping as it approaches. “Look!” she whispers.

They huddle down, using the dashboard for cover. Something’s coming down the street, its stretched, contorted shadow arching on the dark road. Nancy lets herself peek a few inches above the steering wheel.

“See anything?” Frank whispers.

“I see something,” she whispers back. She squints, trying to make out more in the sweeping darkness. “It’s—I think whoever it is is crawling.”

“Crawling?” Frank repeats, and now he’s sticking his eyes up over the dashboard too. “Hold on. Is that—!”

Whatever it is is slowly meandering towards the back door. Nancy reaches for Frank’s wrist, only realizing a moment later that perhaps she shouldn’t. She lets go as if electrocuted, face warm.

The moving shadow is a welcome distraction. It’s hard to make out in the dark, the moon too shrouded by thick clouds to help visibility. Nancy follows the shadow for as long as she can, as it trails along the back wall of the shop, before suddenly, it disappears, leaving Nancy blinking at the scene.

“Where did they go?” she asks.

Frank is already reaching for the door handle. “Come on,” he urges. “We have to follow.”

She nods and climbs out the car after him. The air is brisk, cooler than the car, more biting, and she hurries to the wall where their suspect disappeared. Frank runs his hand along it, feeling for discrepancies.

“Whoever it was couldn’t have just vanished,” Nancy reasons.

Frank makes a noise of triumph. “They didn’t,” he says, pointing at a gaping darkness in the wall—a hole, nondescript and easy to overlook but there nonetheless.

Nancy crouches down to get a better look. She pulls her flashlight out of her pocket, shining a beam of light at the edges. Its depths go on too far for her to guess how long the hole continues for, but regardless, it’s awfully narrow.

“There’s no way a person can get through that,” Nancy says.

“An adult, maybe not. What about a kid?”

“A kid?” Nancy says, her theories tumbling around as if in a washing machine. That would throw out Toni. But what child would—?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe this is more of a case of a kid messing around to impress his friends than anything else.”

“Well, let’s find out,” Nancy says. “We can’t fit in there, but we can use the door.”

Frank tries the handle. “The door’s locked.” A keypad lock sits under the handle, gleaming in the moonlight as if in invitation. A familiar, mischievous smile nudges his mouth. “Got anything to change that?”

”I think so,” Nancy says, already forming a plan. She pulls her compact out of her purse, dusting over the keypad. This, at least, comes easily to her, regardless of where or when she is. Her and Frank peer at the fingerprints.

“I think I got it,” he says. “Five, four… three, seven? Or seven, three?”

“Five, four, three, seven,” she confirms. “Try it.”

Frank does. The keypad beeps in affirmation, a tiny green light flickering on. Frank and Nancy exchange quick looks before Frank tries the handle again.

The door gives a mighty creak as it opens. The two of them stand, momentarily frozen, as they wait for the groaning of the hinges to subside. Frank puts a finger to his lips as he takes a careful step forward; Nancy nods.

They take slow, measured paces into the back of the pitch-black kitchen, the sound of their careful footsteps drowned out by the hum of the fridge. Other noises are standing out as well, unnatural ones—the rustling of plastic wrap, the snuffling of hands burrowing through a stockpile, the barest of moving feet.

Nancy wishes she could see Frank’s face, make out the features. She blinks, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the consuming darkness, but can make out little more than the rough shapes of where the counters are. She reaches out, hoping to find purchase on something solid, but her palm hits the wall instead. A light switch might be nearby, and she sets about finding it in earnest, her fingers running along the wall.

Finally, her thumb rolls over a switch. She flicks it upward.

Light floods the room, revealing someone—no, not a someone, per se—skittering across the floor.

“Woah!” Frank yelps, jolting out of the way. Nancy grabs him by the arm to keep him from colliding with the shelf of pots and pans.

“Was that a… raccoon?” Nancy asks, still blinking spots from her adjusting eyes. The chittering, animalistic gnawing noises certainly add credence to her theory. “It definitely wasn’t a person.”

“Definitely not,” Frank agrees. “Here—hang on.”

He kneels down and ducks under one of the counters, crawling forward. A scuffling sound breaks through the quiet, claws against tiles, paws against floor.

“I see it!” Frank says. “Let me just—I think I—ow!” He withdraws sharply, nearly smacking the back of his head on the underside of the counter in the process. “It scratched me!”

Nancy hurries to kneel next to him. “What? Are you okay?”

“My pride’s definitely a little hurt,” Frank says. He dabs a thumb gingerly against his jaw where Nancy can already see bright red scratches swell up the skin, thankfully bloodless. “But the rest of me is fine.”

“The good news is that it’s highly unlikely you’re in danger of being infected with rabies from a scratch,” Nancy says. “It didn’t bite you, did it?”

He shakes his head. “Just took a swipe at me,” he says. “From the looks of it, it’s using that hole in the wall we saw as a way in and out.”

“Where do you think the hole leads to?”

“Probably a cupboard. If it’s full of ingredients, no one might have ever realized something dug an opening through the back of it.”

“Well, the owners can find a way to patch it,” Nancy says. “What we need to do now is catch that raccoon.”

“Right.”

They set to work luring it out of its hiding spot. They pull aromatic foods out of the fridge to pile onto the floor as bait, even lift trash bin lids to try and entice the raccoon out with the promising smell of a meal, and wait. 

“Let’s try and trap it somewhere we know it can’t escape,” Frank whispers. He points to a cupboard. “There?”

Nancy opens it; it looks like the storage spot for coffee and espresso beans. She drags the bags out and looks inside. No discernible holes to weasel out of.

They lay a trail of raccoon-friendly treats into a trail leading into the cupboard—leftover chunks of pastries, a handful of nuts, and a couple of dog treats meant for Togo stored in Nancy’s purse—a classic breadcrumbs-in-the-woods situation. When the raccoon shows no sign of emerging for a late night snack, Nancy decides to go on the offense.

“Did you see where it went before it scratched you?” she asks Frank.

He instinctively touches the scratch again, slightly less red now. “Behind the fridge, I think.”

Nancy nods. They’ll just have to spook it out a bit, lure it out of its comfy hiding spot. She grabs the fridge’s handle, rattling it a bit. No movement.

“Hm,” she murmurs. It must’ve moved. She can make out distant sounds, muffled by cabinets, of scuffling paws and sharp nails scraping the tile floor. It’s definitely here, she just can't seem to trace the noises.

She kneels down, intent on looking for the thing, shuffling some furniture aside. She’s just about to reach for the drawers by the fridge when Frank reaches out, seizing her wrist.

“Wait!” he says. “Don’t anger it unnecessarily.”

“I just don’t want it setting up camp anywhere. We’re trying to lure it out, aren’t we?”

Frank seems to consider this. Nancy wonders what Bess would do in this situation—squeal and run—or George—set her jaw and dive in after doing some helpful Googling—or even Joe—be at the ready with a frying pan as a self-defense tool. The last one makes her smile, chuckle. She misses him.

“Nancy?”

“Sorry,” she says. “I was just thinking about what Joe would do right now.”

That makes a crooked smile show up on Frank’s face too. “Something stupid, definitely,” he says. The hand he has around Nancy’s wrist slips a little, sliding into her palm. “Let’s not take any advice from him.”

He pulls her away from the danger of potentially having a raccoon leap on her face in sheer surprise, but doesn’t let go of her hand just yet. She doesn’t think she’s ever held Frank’s hand before, and to do it now—it’s nice. It’s different from holding hands with Ned, softer, Frank’s hands missing some of the rough skin that Ned attributed to football practice.

Without warning, the raccoon comes sniffing its way out from behind the shelves of brown sugar. Frank freezes, his grip on Nancy tightening, and she responds in kind, staying motionless to avoid detection.

Slowly, it noses its way to the line of food Frank and Nancy have laid out. The distraction proves worthwhile, the raccoon prioritizing the snack over its silent voyeurs, small nuts vanishing into its mouth as it eats. It follows the helpfully laid out line somewhat crookedly, but stops cold in front of the cabinet, clearly unsure if it wants to continue its food crawl into a dark, musty cabinet.

“Almost there,” Frank whispers.

The raccoon makes the decision to climb inside. It scoops up a few sugar cubes with its greedy claws, shoving it into its mouth, and then Frank is kicking the cabinet door shut with his foot and trapping the raccoon with its sweets.

\--

It takes a few calls to Animal Control for someone to pick up the line—a very sleepy man grumbling about just how annoying the graveyard shift is—and twenty-something minutes for the truck to actually arrive.

“All right,” says the guy who hops out from the driver’s seat, a cage dangling from a gloved hand. “Where is the little rascal?”

They point him in the direction of the cupboard, even though the sound of impatient claws against the wood makes it obvious where the raccoon’s holed up. He straps on his other glove and gets to work.

By the time the wrangler coaxes it out and into his cage, it’s well past three a.m. and the cold has settled into a bitter chill. Nancy wraps her arms around herself; the coat has stopped holding her warmth in a while ago. Frank notices, and his hand makes an abortive movement toward his coat, as if to offer it to her, that he seems to think the better of.

“All right, we’re all done here,” the wrangler says after loading the cage into the back of his truck. “Make sure to tell whoever owns the place to sanitize the hell out of it. Raccoon saliva can really ruin someone’s day, you know.”

“Got it,” Frank says, gingerly touching the scratch on his jaw. “Thanks for your help.”

He drives off without much fanfare, leaving Nancy to wonder if they should tidy up in the cafe’s kitchen at all. Then again, they’re both tired, and she can’t ask that much of Frank, who no doubt has things to do and people to see. Nancy checks her wristwatch. Would Deirdre still be awake right now, doused in Victoria’s Secret perfume, waiting for Frank to come back?

“Well,” Frank says, heaving a sigh. “Looks like that’s that. This case sounds exactly like one a store down the street asked me to take on, so maybe the raccoon has been terrorizing the town for a while.” He smiles crookedly. “Hopefully he doesn’t have accomplices.”

“As long as River Heights takes a good look at its infrastructure problems, this mystery is as good as solved, raccoon friends or not.”

“I guess it is.”

A silence follows that turns glum when Nancy realizes the finality of the moment. They’ve solved the mystery, but they haven’t exactly solved anything between the two of them, and it’s obvious there’s at least three years of undealt-with stuff to muddle through.

Nancy turns to him. “It was nice to… work together like this again.”

“I know.”

Nancy takes a breath, then decides to plunge further. “Why did we stop?”

We were such a good team, she wants to say. All those mysteries, all those phone calls, all those cross-country visits. To throw it all away because—

She just can’t quite stifle the anger that’s starting to manifest and replace her disappointment, her dull sadness. Why did Frank let this happen? Why didn’t he care enough about their friendship to keep it from crumbling away? Why did he have to ruin everything?

Why did _she_ ruin everything?

When she looks at Frank again, she realizes she’s not the only one sitting on a seed of anger. There's something in Frank’s look, something that feels like a reflection of her own rattled emotions.

“I think you might know why,” Frank says, and doesn’t say more.

“I don’t,” she says. “It’s not like you ever explained. You just—threw it all at me at once and didn’t give me a chance to process.”

“A chance to process?” Frank huffs. “You didn’t reach out for _weeks_ after I told you. You weren’t processing. You just didn’t know how to talk to me anymore.”

She thinks, suddenly, of all those fights with Ned, how he would occasionally call her out on her tunnel vision, on her unbelievably smart brain when it came to solving riddles that then completely faltered when matters of the heart were involved. She can read someone’s ticks and lies so well, but has never been able to do as good of a job with personal feelings.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not sure which words are the right ones. She has no idea what she’s even apologizing for, not having done it yet. Or at least not remembering it. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Frank.”

“Well, you did.” The wall has suddenly become more fascinating than Nancy. “It’s not like I expected you to—” He clenches his jaw, refusing to finish the sentence. “I thought a part of you knew. Joe had been dropping hints for years.”

“I swear I didn’t.”

Frank huffs. “Yeah, I figured that out.”

“I swear!” she says again. “I had no idea. I was just—so surprised. I had just broken up with Ned, and then you were asking me out, and I was so flustered I didn’t know what to say.”

The explanation sounds ridiculous leaving her mouth, maybe because it is. She can’t figure out anymore why she didn’t say anything, why she didn’t go out with Frank and see what could’ve happened. It’s like she’s set off this horrible chain reaction that’s somehow resulted in her life being turned completely upside down, except everyone is still upright while she’s struggling to get her feet off the ceiling.

“I don’t know why I didn’t say yes,” she admits, the words coming out uncontrollably, desperately. She doesn’t even realize how true they are until she hears them out loud. “You’re—you’re so _like me_ , Frank. We have so much in common. If we had—”

“Don’t,” Frank says, cutting her off, but his eyes are wide, lips shaking. “It doesn’t even make sense to talk about it now.”

As far as Nancy’s concerned, now’s the _only_ time they can. She’s nauseated by the feeling that after today, Frank might never again pick up the phone when he sees her name on the screen.

“Can’t you at least give me the chance to explain?”

“What difference would it make?” Frank asks. “It’s happened. We can’t go back to how things were.” He rattles out a breath that turns into puffs of cold air slipping out from between his teeth. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t talk anymore while I’m in town.”

“Frank—”

“I should get back to Deirdre’s place anyway,” he says. The icy air has sucked the energy out of him too, and he pulls his coat taut around his torso. He doesn’t quite look Nancy in the eye. “Goodnight, Nancy.”

He still doesn’t look at her as he turns to go, hands stuffed into his pockets. Nancy can make out clenched fists through the fabric. His walk is brisk as he takes off down the dark sidewalk, and for the life of her, she can’t think of anything to say to get him to stay, to reverse the damage she’s inflicted.

\--

The drive back to Bess’ apartment is as cold as it is miserly. Nancy spends the entire time helplessly letting the guilt consume her, feeling responsible for a past she has no memory of beyond that day in the library.

Then again, it all _started_ that day in the library, didn’t it?

The haunted, broken look in Frank’s eyes follows her around like a ghost as she draws her coat more tightly around her middle. Being the one to blame for that expression isn’t a particularly good feeling.

Bess is hunched over the kitchen island eating a toaster strudel in one hand and rifling through a Cosmo magazine with the other when Nancy comes in.

“Hey!” Bess says through a mouthful. She wipes glaze off her cheek. “How did the stakeout go?”

“We caught the culprit,” Nancy says, unwinding her scarf from around her neck. “So I guess it worked.”

“And?”

Bess pauses to chew. “And what happened with Frank?” she asks. She’s impatient enough to ask that a few flakes of crust still come flying out of her mouth as she talks.

“That,” Nancy says. She sighs. “Could have gone better.”

Bess’ expression falls. “Oh, no.”

“It was fine last night. A little awkward, maybe, but fine. Then this morning I might have made the mistake of asking why we weren’t working together anymore.”

“Oh.” Bess stops to furrow her eyebrows. “Wait, that wasn’t obvious?”

Nancy sighs. It really should’ve been. Even if it hasn’t—the two of them haven’t worked together in years. Nancy should’ve at least realized that some of their comfortable camaraderie has faded, taking with it the ease of their conversations. To ask so bluntly—it has been a ridiculous mistake to make.

“Maybe,” Bess starts to say, voice small, “it can’t really be helped any more?”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs. “I’m just saying, it’s been a while for you guys. I don’t think you can just fix it all in a few hours. Especially if Frank doesn’t want to.”

“You think Frank doesn’t want to?”

“I don’t know,” Bess says, very quickly, so as to get that bit out of the way. “But if I were him… I don’t think I’d want to relive all that again, you know? I’d probably just want to move on.” Bess stops, wincing, as if regaining control of her senses. “Sorry. I know you probably don’t want to hear that.”

Of course Nancy doesn’t want to, even if a part of her has been ruminating—agonizingly—over the same thing. It’s been three years without so much as a Christmas card. Maybe Frank doesn’t want to fix this. Maybe seeing Nancy again only makes everything harder for him.

It’s a drab thought, one that matches the cold air and gray sky well.

She needs coffee. She needs a nap. She sighs, reaching for the coffee pot. If they can’t figure this thing out, and they can’t send Nancy back, she’d have to get used to this, this radio silence from Frank.

“I like to find solutions to things,” Nancy says, checking the coffee pot. A decent amount is left, but cold. “Accepting that something just doesn’t want to be solved is… difficult.”

The answering look Bess offers her is sad, if not a little pitying. Nancy doesn’t quite like it being directed at her, but before Bess can put words to her expression, the front door opens, the wreath on it jingling.

George comes in alongside a wave of icy air. “Morning,” she says as she unwinds a bulky scarf from around her neck, an incongruous contrast from her bare ankles, exposed by her low sneakers and cropped leggings. She must’ve gone for an early jog. “Boy, it’s cold. And Bess, your mailbox was almost overflowing.”

“Oops,” Bess says. “Anything good in there?”

George hands her a stack of mail, most of them fashion catalogues and Christmas magazines rolled into cylinders. “How did the stakeout go, Nance?” she asks as Bess starts flipping through the holiday sale ads.

“We caught the culprit, so not bad, I guess.”

“You guess?” George repeats. Understanding pinches her face. “Things with Frank not going so good, huh?”

“How’d you know?” Bess asks.

“Lucky guess,” George says, wincing. “He’s not warming up at all?”

Nancy can’t quite say he isn’t. There are moments where the ice he’s carved himself in chips away, moments when their friendship seems to melt his barriers, but then he remembers himself and the purpose of his igloo and rebuilds it in seconds. Nancy recalls moments of last night that were pleasant, beyond the cordiality one might extend to an old friend, even. The memory of his hand clutching hers, tight and protective, comes to mind.

Still, an unwillingness to succumb to that affection, that past they shared and all the happiness associated with it, isn’t something she can battle with. She can hack away at an ice sculpture forever; it won’t matter if the water just keeps on freezing.

“Keep at it,” George says. “If you want to, I mean. He can’t ignore you forever.”

“Well, it’s not like he’s ignoring her,” Bess points out, somehow both helpful and unhelpful at once. “More like he’s only doing the bare minimum. Right, Nance?”

Sounds about right. “I don’t think he wants to be my friend. Not anymore, anyway.”

“His loss!” George says. “If that’s his choice, he’s an idiot.”

“George.”

“No, I mean it. Nancy Drew is a great friend to have. If his life doesn’t have room for you, he’s the one missing out.”

Bess interrupts by excitedly waving around a glitter-smothered Christmas card—a party invitation. “Ooh, Christmas party at the McNab household. Do you want to go?” She turns to George and Nancy, grinning. “Maybe a good distraction, Nan?”

Nancy doesn’t really _want_ to go at all, what with the likelihood that she’ll run into people who’ll reminisce with her about memories she doesn’t recall, to say nothing of the Ned situation and that a Christmas party is the sort of event you attend as a couple, hand in hand, arm in arm. Bess’ look of total excitement is hardly a surprise when Nancy looks over at her. Bess loves Christmas, and she loves parties, and she also happens to love mistletoe encounters, something which occurs frequently when the first two are combined. Nancy sighs.

“I’m not sure what I would wear,” she says.

Bess waves her off. “You’d have lots of stuff that would work in your closet. Ooh! Like that red dress. That’s festive.”

“Red dress?”

“Yeah! It’s in your closet back—oh. Right. Sometimes I forget about the whole…” She stops, gesturing vaguely toward her head. “You know. Amnesia thing.”

“Uh huh.”

“Don’t worry, Nancy,” Bess says, jumping to her feet to squeeze Nancy’s shoulder, a gesture of comfort that doesn’t do much to loosen the knot in Nancy’s chest. “I’m sure your memories will all come back. Or we’ll find another way to fix it altogether.”

Her words are sweet, but her eyes lack the reassurance Bess is trying to bring across. Nancy can read the worry there, and will bet it’s in her own expression as well. Sure, she’s never let a strange mystery get her down before, but this one is different, and regardless of how much Bess and George keep insisting that everything will be fine, Nancy can’t stop the traitorous voice in her brain saying _but what if it won’t?_ Even if she _does_ retain all of her lost memories, what then? What about Ned, and her job? What about Frank?

She’s still not entirely sure what she wants, but she doesn’t want any of it to be like this.

“Let’s go get that dress,” Bess says, already grabbing her purse. If nothing else, Bess is extraordinary at providing distractions from soul-crushing moments. “I’ll go with you, in case Ned is there.”

Nancy smiles. “I can handle Ned, Bess.”

“I know that! It just might be awkward, is all. And if he is there, Ned’s definitely going to have questions.”

\--

The walk around the neighborhood Nancy takes is a much-needed breath of cool air after all that heating in Bess’ apartment and pent-up thoughts in Nancy’s brain starting to sneak up. The fierce December nip in the air wakes her up, and even Bess’ chatter about her Boy-du-Jour is a comfortable background noise.

Bess leads the way, guiding Nancy to an apartment complex not far away from Harrison Park. The building looks fairly new, and seems to be inhabited with a younger crowd, mostly couples and fresh-out-of-college roommates. They run into one man by the mailboxes who smiles and says hello to Nancy, as if he knows her, and Nancy has to remind herself that just because she doesn’t recognize him doesn’t mean she doesn’t know him, and belatedly smiles back.

Bess unlocks the door with a key from her own keyring—one painted purple at the base and labeled, in Sharpie, N+N—and leads the way. The apartment smells unfamiliar in the way someone else’s house always does, except in this case, it’s _her_ house.

It doesn’t quite feel like home, but Nancy doesn’t currently have time to unpack that.

“What do you think?” Bess asks. “Anything feeling familiar? Bringing back some lost memories maybe?”

Nancy shakes her head, feeling more lost than ever. Nothing about this apartment feels like hers, even the pieces she recognizes as having migrated over from her room in her father’s house. There’s a picture framed on the wall of her, Bess, and George with their arms slung around each other that Nancy doesn’t remember taking. The smiles in the photo seem taunting, cruel, almost, the longer Nancy stares.

“Well, come on,” Bess says, grabbing Nancy by the elbow and tugging her along. “Let’s get you that dress. No need to dawdle.”

It’s obvious that Bess doesn’t want to run into Ned, like they’re unlawfully entering or something equally criminal. Nancy doesn’t feel all that comfortable here either, but her curiosity is driving her to stay just a little bit longer.

The bedroom Bess drags her into is simple, traditional, clearly influenced by Nancy’s style more than Ned’s. The satin pillows on the bed are neatly piled up, almost like they would be in a guest room. The lamp in the corner is Nancy’s too, one taken from her room at home. The bookshelf seems to be mostly her literature of choice too.

Does Ned really live here too?

Bess pulling the closet door open and revealing a cleanly-halved closet—women’s dresses, pants, and shirts on one side, men’s sweaters and jeans on the other—answers that question, but just barely. Ned’s always been the more submissive type, the kind who’s happy to sit behind the scenes, but it feels by now as if Nancy’s personality has completely overshadowed him, engulfed him.

They’re not good for each other. They don’t bring out the best in each other. Nancy figured it out three years ago, and the evidence that she made the right decision back then stands clear as day in front of her.

She’s at least relieved to see that she still recognizes most of the pieces in the closet, hangers squeaking as she filters through them, although some are new, slightly more sophisticated garments. Fit for a detective.

“Leave the clothes to me,” Bess says, hands already square on her hips. “Go grab whatever else you need.”

Nancy relents; fashion is Bess’ domain, and besides, clothes are the least important detail in this apartment for Nancy at the moment. More than anything, she’s curious to go snooping through the shelves and the drawers—although, is it really snooping if it’s her own apartment? That terminology doesn’t quite seem right, even if Nancy does feel decidedly like a stranger in here, if not an unattached apparition merely floating between the furniture around her.

She takes a peek in the kitchen. A dirty plate—Ned’s dinner from last night?—is sitting in the sink, still unwashed. There’s a tiny plastic Christmas tree by the coffeemaker, and there’s Nancy’s favorite brand of soymilk in the fridge, and there’s a cheap tourist’s mug—VISIT OSLO! painted on it in large bubble letters—in the cabinet, but none of these details are triggering any memories in Nancy. She sighs, somehow disappointed even though her hopes weren’t very high up to begin with.

In the living room, the couch’s pillows are in suspicious disarray. The comforter draped over the armrest cinches it: Ned’s been sleeping out here. Nancy fears the reason is horribly sentimental.

To the left of the sofa stands a tall Christmas tree, bedecked in silver and red. Nancy’s never bothered with getting a tree for herself before—she always let Hannah purchase one for the living room, and left it at that. The one year she had bought one for her bedroom, it had been on the brink of dying of thirst after Nancy ended up unexpectedly hopping on a plane to Mexico to look into a smuggling ring right before Christmas. This one, however, is sitting in a sizable drink, the water topping off the tree stand. Ned must be feeding it.

The desk in the corner catches her attention next. Some of Nancy’s travel memorabilia is on the desktop—a postcard from Beech Hill, a hula-skirted bobblehead from Hawaii, and plenty of pieces she doesn’t recognize from all over the world—and from the looks of the papers scattered about the drawers, most of them to-do lists and phone number booklets, the desk is Nancy’s. 

A wad of letters stuffed behind a pencil holder sticks out to her. They look almost tucked away, half-hidden from sight. If this was a suspect’s desk Nancy was investigating, she would most definitely start with the letters. The fact that it’s all her own things puts an uneasy feeling in her stomach, like a seed of discomfort growing gnarly roots.

She grabs the pile regardless, and unfolds the topmost.

_Miss Drew,_

_We at the Chicago police department were most impressed with the counterfeiting scheme we believe you helped to uncover last spring. Having read thoroughly about the case—and your instrumental help in solving it—now that the story has reached national acclaim, we would love to speak with you further about a career opportunity here with us at the Chicago detective department. If you’re interested in this offer, please return a reply within thirty days._

_Sincerely,_

_Chief Roberts  
Chicago Police_

The fact that it’s dated from over half a year ago doesn’t bode well, Nancy thinks. Nor does that the letter is merely one of a stack, all of which detail various cases or job opportunities that Nancy apparently ignored, and she can’t figure out why. She thumbs through them, skimming through the letters, some written by professionals, others by friends, others by former suspects from cases long passed. Prudence Rutherford wanted help recovering statues from Austria. Jamila wanted help tracking down Sonny from somewhere in Brazil. The Swedish FBI requested her services tracking down a kidnapping ring.

What happened to these cases? Some of them are even unopened, but still kept, as if hidden away like candy for a rainy day. Nancy flips through letter after letter, plea after plea, and notices that some of them are follow-ups, urgently asking her to reconsider. The more she reads, the more she feels like she swallowed a peach pit, one that weighs heavily inside her, undigested.

“Nancy!”

Nancy looks up from the stack of envelopes in her hand. Ned is at the door, keys in hand and hurriedly unwinding a scarf from around his neck. 

“Oh, Ned. Hi.”

“It’s so good to see you,” Ned says, smile already stretching his cheeks. “I’ve been texting all week—I was really getting worried.”

“Sorry,” she says.

“How are things with Bess?” He shoots her a hopeful look. “Is she ready to send you back home?”

Home. Nancy looks around the apartment, and wonders if this could ever feel like home, even with all her belongings scattered about. Something about it is just… missing.

Maybe it’s the letters in her hand, the promise of something more that they hold.

“Do you know anything about these?” Nancy asks, holding them up.

“Uh.” Ned comes closer to take a look. “What are they?”

“Job offers,” Nancy says. “Ones I’m pretty sure I turned down.”

“Oh. Like… cases?”

Nancy nods. Ned’s confusion doesn’t clear away, which upturns a bucket of stones in Nancy’s stomach. She doesn’t figure out why until she realizes that this means Ned didn’t cajole her into any of this, not really. She decided to, perhaps because of his prodding, but she decided to nonetheless. Just her.

“You didn’t know?” Nancy asks.

“I swear I didn’t,” Ned says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know.”

A silence suspends between them. Ned is the first to break it, lurching forward. “Nancy, what’s going on?” he asks. “Things have been… weird with you and me for a while now. Did I do something?”

Nancy shakes her head. She knows she’s been unfair to him. As confusing as it has been for her, it must not be any better for him to suddenly have his girlfriend vanish on him. The guilt she’s been feeling about Frank expands to include Ned in the mix as well, which is exactly what she needs right now. She sighs.

“No, Ned,” she says. “Of course you didn’t. Sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

“Well, what am I supposed to think?” Ned asks.

It’s a loaded question, especially given that Nancy doesn’t know the answer herself all that well. She knows she doesn’t want this. She knows this isn’t what she’s looking for.

She catches her reflection in a mirror across the room. A stranger looks back at her. It isn’t so much the three years of growth and haircuts and new make-up that made the difference, but something else. 

“Hey,” she says, hoping Ned won’t mind the subject change that much. “Do you remember how it happened that we got back together?”

“Sure I do. You asked for my help on a case, and we got to talking, and we decided we should give this thing between us another shot.”

Nancy closes her eyes, wishing the words would draw forth some forgotten memory, some fragmented recollection. Nothing comes.

“You’re sure?” she asks.

“What’s this all about, Nancy?” Ned asks. He steps closer, close enough that Nancy can see how pink his cheeks have been nipped by the cold, how much concern is written all over his face. “You’ve got me worried.” He grabs her hand, enveloping it in his icy one. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay, I got everything!” Bess chirps, coming out from the bedroom. She freezes when she sees Ned, like a thief caught red-handed, and nearly drops the bag of clothes. “Ned! Hi! You’re back!”

Ned’s eyebrows pull together. “I live here.”

“Right! And we, uh, were just leaving.” Her eyes flicker down to Ned’s hands, wrapped around Nancy’s. “Nancy and I have a really busy day ahead of us. And, um. Nancy, you don’t want to be late for that appointment, right?”

The look Bess gives her, all sharp, wide eyes, is almost as much of a giveaway as her atrocious acting. Nancy feels Ned let go of her fingers, sighing. Obviously he knows something is off, and that he’s being left in the dark about it, and although Nancy feels guilt creep up on her, it isn’t strong enough to encourage her to stay and talk it all out. It would take too long, and she isn’t even entirely sure what she would want to say. She can’t dodge this conversation forever, but maybe for just for a little while longer—

Bess grabs her by the shoulders and starts veering her towards the door, making up nervous apologies for Ned all the while. Ned reaches out and seizes Nancy’s wrist before she’s home free.

“Nancy, wait,” he says, hopeful. “Will you come to Minkie’s party tonight? I can come too, and we can talk. Please.”

He looks almost piteously desperate, so much so that Nancy can’t bring herself to deny him. It occurs to her that she hasn’t had a good chat with Ned in ages, not even from three years ago, considering he needed space to heal from their breakup.

Bess’ fingernails dig into her shoulder.

“Sure,” she says. “We can do that.”

\--

Bess is all too eager to primp Nancy up for the party, regardless of Nancy’s lack of interest in said party. She makes an evening out of the preparations while George watches, done with her own gussying up in under ten minutes.

Nancy’s mind is too overflowed to follow any of it. Bess pulls out her curling iron and gets to work while Nancy considers what she found in her and Ned’s apartment, the evidence that she’s shackles herself to River Heights. The heavy stack of letters weighs on her mind.

“You doing all right?” George asks while Bess, at least three bobby-pins in her mouth, works on wrangling Nancy’s hair into a party-appropriate updo. “I know Minkie isn’t exactly your favorite person.”

It’s almost comforting, knowing that, if nothing else, at least Minkie’s insufferableness hasn’t changed.

“We have to hide her from Ned, too,” Bess says, although it comes out a bit muffled around the pins. She wrestles one out from between her teeth. “He’s gonna be there _and_ on the prowl for Nancy.”

“You don’t have to hide me from him,” Nancy says. “I appreciate the gesture, but I think we should get this talk over with.”

George’s eyes widen, almost imperceptibly. “Talk? What talk?”

“Are you breaking up with him?!”

Nancy doesn’t know quite all the details yet, which is probably an oversight. For Ned’s sake, and the clarification he deserves, she should probably prepare a bit. “I think yes,” she says. “It’s… cruel to keep going like this.”

Why couldn’t someone like Deirdre have succeeded in seizing Ned’s attention? Why did it have to be like this, all backwards, with her trapped with Ned and Frank with Deirdre, and worst of all, why did it all make so much _sense_ on paper, from an unbiased standpoint, but ache so much when she thought about it?

“Then talking to him is probably the right thing to do,” George says. It sounds like she’s working hard to keep any personal opinion out of her voice, the tone of it high and much too casual. “Clear the air, get it all out there.”

“Do you think there’s a better way?” Nancy presses. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

George gives her a sad little smile. “I know that. But sometimes getting hurt or being the one who does the hurting—it can’t always be helped, you know?”

Nancy nods, but takes longer to actually process what she’s just said. Maybe she’s right, and pain—whether it be given or received, is just another facet of an adult, communicative relationship. She doesn’t hesitate to hit her suspects with the uncomfortable facts, hardly bats an eye when she watches the anger and pain grab their features, but it’s a colder aspect of herself she’s kept compartmentalized for detective work, not for friends.

Her phone vibrates atop the bathroom counter. Bess makes a noise of frustration.

“It’s your dad,” she says, leaning over to take a peek. “Don’t take too long.” Her hands tickle briefly over Nancy’s scalp. “I’m working on a masterpiece here.”

“I promise,” Nancy says, grabbing the phone.

She ducks into Bess’ bedroom to take the call. She closes the bathroom door behind her, muffling George and Bess’ chatter.

“Hey, dad.”

“Nancy! Sorry I couldn’t call sooner. Your Aunt has been running us ragged over here with the Christmas festivities. You’re going to have find a way to come next year.”

A strange amount of relief washes over her upon hearing her father’s voice, firm and reliable, carry through the phone. He sounds just like he always has, plus an extra shot of holiday cheer. Aunt Eloise must be making her infamous spiked apple cider again. The nostalgia hits Nancy just as fast as the consolation of hearing her father’s voice did.

“I’ll try, dad,” Nancy says. She wishes more than anything that he were here now, right in front of her, able to share that lawyer’s wisdom and fatherly advice. Even in truly dire cases over the years, he always seemed to have the right answers. Nancy wonders why she couldn’t have inherited that particular skill.

In the background of the call, Nancy can make out Hannah’s tipsy laughter. Nancy’s eyes go a little misty.

“Are you all right, Nancy?” her father asks. “Did something happen?”

Her grip on the phone tightens. To try and explain it all now, here, over the _phone_ —it would take ages, to say nothing of how hard it would be to even convince her father this isn’t some bizarre hoax. Her father’s not an easily-fooled man. Always a believer of the cold, hard evidence. Now there’s a trait she inherited whole-heartedly.

“I’m fine. I just miss you,” she says, which is at least honest. “I’ve been… having a bit of a rough time and wish you were here.”

“A rough time? It’s not you and Ned, is it?”

“Sort of.” But that’s really just the half of it, if not just a scrape off the surface. “To be honest, I just… don’t understand how I got here.”

The other line is quiet for a moment. “I get it, honey,” he says after a long pause, probably born of reflection. “This time is year is especially good at reminding us of just how fast the year’s gone by. But Nancy, you have nothing to be ashamed of in your life.”

“I know, dad.”

“You have great friends, a nice boyfriend, a steady job, and—I hope—a pretty supportive father. And you enrich everyone else’s lives so much.”

“I know,” Nancy says again. “But—wasn’t there ever a point in your life where you wished things had gone differently? That what you have now just… isn’t right?”

Even to herself, Nancy knows she sounds despicably ungrateful. Hearing her father sum up her accomplishments like that, she knows she has no reason to complain. But then again, he doesn’t understand the whole story, or even sees the entire puzzle. Nancy’s seeing all the pieces, and it’s a jumbled, overturned mess.

“Regrets are normal for everyone,” her father says. “But you know… you’ll only have more if you don’t try to fix what’s causing them now.”

It’s solid guidance, just not all that easy to implement. Nancy _would_ fix it if she knew how.

“I guess I just… don’t know where to start,” Nancy tells him. “I’m getting a lot of resistance.”

Her father makes a soft noise of understanding. “Nancy, I know you won’t like hearing this,” he says gently, “but not everything can be approached like your cases. Some things in life can’t be pushed. They’ll come to you on their own time if they’re meant to be.”

“You’re right,” Nancy says, grumbling. “I don’t like hearing this.”

He laughs. “That’s my daughter,” he says, overflowing with affection. “Just give it some time, whatever it is, all right? You’d be surprised how many things fall into place when you let them. Take your mother and I—”

He’s interrupted by Aunt Eloise calling for him in the background, yelling for him to get back into tree trimming already because he’s the only one tall enough to put the star on top without hauling a ladder out. Nancy wishes she could be in two places at once, both the coziness of Aunt Eloise’s house, smelling of gingerbread and childhood memories, and the warmth of Bess’ apartment, full of sweets and romantic holiday songs. Perhaps somewhere between the two, she’d feel at home.

“Nancy, I have to go,” her father says. “We can talk more about this later, I promise, but for now, your aunt’s threatening to cut me off the eggnog supply if I don’t help decorate the place.”

“That’s okay, dad. We can talk again later.”

“Great. Merry Christmas, Nancy.”

Nancy stares at the phone for a bit after the call is over. _Regrets_. It’s not like she’s not familiar with them, but never like _this_. More like regret that she missed that flight, or regret that she forgot to buy Bess cake for her birthday, not regret that she somehow spiraled her entire life down the drain by taking the wrong jobs and losing the wrong friends and making all the wrong decisions.

The bathroom door opens, revealing Bess’ half-made-up face, one eye missing mascara and eyeshadow.

“Nancy, you coming back or what?” she asks. She looks down at the phone in Nancy’s hand. “Everything with your dad okay?”

“Yeah.” Nancy pockets it once again. “He was just checking in.”

“Oh. Then get back in here! Your hair isn’t going to perfect itself!”

George’s voice wafts over from where she’s sitting cross-legged on the bathroom counter. “You’re just upset because mine’s too short for you to mess with.”

Bess ignores her, grabbing Nancy’s wrist. “Come in!” She smiles. “We have a party to get ready for!”

\--

The Christmas party is already in full swing by the time the three of them arrive, partly due to Bess’ hair routine taking slightly longer than expected and pushing them from “fashionably late” territory into “obscenely late” realms. Luckily, the house is full enough that no one seems to notice their arrival, let alone their punctuality.

The house looks, admittedly, splendid. Mr. McNab retired to the beach, Bess whispers to her, and Minkie has since commandeered her father’s mansion. At least, it certainly feels like a mansion tonight—the wreaths hung on every outward-facing window and glimmering garlands draped over furniture and the champagne pyramid in the center of the dining room certainly make it seem so. The Christmas spirit is abundant, bolstered by the holiday music playing in every room and the fact that it feels like all of River Heights is here. Nancy recognizes her old second grade teacher giggling over an eggnog in the corner and feels herself pale a tad.

“I found the man of the hour,” George says once she’s managed to slink through the crowd after picking up drinks for the three of them. She hands Nancy and Bess cups of mulled wine. “Ned’s in the kitchen. He saw me, but once he realized you weren’t with me, Nance, he lost interest.”

“Jeez,” Bess grumbles. “The guy should really say hi to us more often. He typically just acts like I don’t exist.”

It’s a gift Nancy would be happy to borrow herself tonight. Distantly, she wonders if the version of herself from this timeline, the one with all her memories intact, has gotten any better at heavy-handed conversations with Ned. As long as they’ve been together, she’s strived to ignore them, sidestep them as if they were booby traps she simply needed to slink past. Admittedly, it’s not a very adult thing to do.

They drop their coats off in the hallway, and when the three of them return to the bustle of the party, Nancy spies Minkie running around balancing a tray of extraordinarily green drinks to offer to guests, halting her waitressing duties only to drape herself over Ned. Nancy watches without real disquiet in her heart at the sight. She thinks back to when she was in Ireland, when George and Bess had told her about Minkie’s shameless advances on Ned during a pool party. She hadn’t been much affected then, either. If she had, she’s even less so now. If anything, Minkie’s doing her a favor: keeping her from her confrontation with Ned.

George puts a hand on Nancy’s arm. “Try to enjoy yourself a little,” she says. “I know you have a lot on your mind, but you can let all that go for one evening, right?”

The advice isn’t bad, but Nancy knows it’s easier to listen to than to actually implement. Now that it’s been brought to her attention, her mind feels so overworked it’s as if it’s stuffed full of cotton, the pressure to solve this case and right everything back to normal starting to push on her a little.

It doesn’t help that those in the crowd who do recognize her accost her with stories and questions she has no memory of. Fumbling her way through the conversations is tedious, especially attempting to discern halfway through if she’s speaking with coworkers, friends, or suspects from a long gone case. The familiar faces—even the ones she doesn’t much care for—become welcome sights after a few conversations gone awry.

One particular familiar face captures Nancy’s attention more than others once she notices him: Frank, easing his way through a doorway, holding a small present for the hostess and smiling at a passing friend.

In his suit, well-tailored and without a wrinkle in sight, all traces of leftover boyhood washed away, Frank is almost too handsome a sight to look at. Has he always been this handsome? Had Nancy turned a blind eye to it before? She remembers thinking it, off-handedly, not in the forefront of her mind, but never has it pulled such a tingle from her, a warmth of affection quite this strong.

Next to him stands Deirdre, arguably even more noticeable than Frank in her festive green dress made of dark velvet. If she and Frank had begun dating years ago, would it have bothered Nancy this much? Logistically, as much as she hates to admit it, they work together. Nancy recalls Deirdre’s desire for maturity, and Frank’s always been a more serious sort, to say nothing of their shared interest in criminology. Perhaps that’s how they first bonded.

“Oh Nancy,” Bess says, words a giant sigh. “I didn’t realize Frank was coming.”

“It’s okay,” Nancy says. 

Bess’ pinched expression makes it clear she doesn’t believe her. 

“Really, Bess,” Nancy insists. 

“Between him and Ned, this party’s like a minefield for you, isn’t it?”

“Pointing that out isn’t helping,” George says, voice hard with reproof. “Just let her walk around like a big girl already, Bess.”

Bess splutters. “I’m just trying to help!” she yells. “I can bring you dessert if you’d like, Nancy.”

“That’s okay, Bess,” Nancy cuts in quickly. “I think I’m just going to get myself another drink.”

Truthfully, she needs a moment away from Bess’ well-meaning but, frankly, overbearing mothering. George, perceptive as ever, takes note of it, and grabs Bess by the elbow, steering her toward the Dunhill twins, who are dressed in matching sequin dresses. Nancy heads for the wet bar, grateful for the moment of calm—or at least, as calm as can be when inside a loud party thumping with Christmas music—and helps herself to a glass of red wine.

The calm is more of a temporary illusion than anything else, though. Within seconds, Nancy’s accosted with yet more unwanted drama as she catches sight of a particularly cunning gaze fixed on her.

“Look who it is.” Deirdre sidles up to the bar, swilling a glass of white wine around in circles. “Us girls haven’t had a chance to chat yet, have we?”

Nancy knows from just one glance that she’s here to gloat. She’s glowing with the need to do so, her lips curled upwards in a smirk that hasn’t seemed to leave her mouth since Nancy first saw her in this… particular universe.

“Hi, Deirdre,” Nancy says, a little wearily. “You look nice.”

“Thanks,” Deirdre says. She looks down at her freshly painted nails, then her suede heels. “I think so too. And so does Frank.”

Nancy feels a curl of irritation rise within her ribs like smoke, but stamps it away with the reminder that she’s being purposefully provoked.

Besides, she has no right to be annoyed.

“He told me about your little detective stakeout,” she continues, unprompted. “Having fun getting up to your old tricks?”

“It was nice to remember how things once were.”

Deirdre scoffs. “Just remember?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know what’s really going on. You can’t stand it now that you know that Frank’s taken. Never mind that you already took Ned.”

“I _took_ Ned?” Nancy scoffs.

Deirdre examines her fingernails. “You disagree, I suppose?”

“I just think it’s an interesting thing to say, coming from you.” Deirdre raises her eyebrows, loftily questioning. Nancy knows it’s a bait, but still can’t keep the words back. “Considering you have a habit of chasing after what’s mine.”

The look on Deirdre’s face makes it clear she’s heard what she was fishing for.

“Except Frank was never yours, now was he?” Deirdre says. Her voice has lost its faux friendliness, replaced by a frightening calm, a carefully contained acidity. “From my point of view, you only ever want what I do. Like a kid who only plays with a toy when someone else starts playing with it.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Deirdre,” Nancy snaps.

“Doesn’t it?”

“No! It has to do with Frank, and how he and I—” Nancy stops herself, her throat going taut. There is no _her and Frank_ anymore, and even when there was, it was never like this. Things have changed. Her feelings have. _She_ has. “I can’t even figure out what you two have in common. What you talk about.”

“More than you think,” Deirdre replies. She leans in, smile set like she’s about to lay down an ace at the poker table. “What exactly do you and Ned have in common anyway?”

Nancy colors. It’s been ages since somebody asked her what she likes about Ned, and the question takes her off guard. This question in particular isn’t the easiest to dodge, seeing as their lack of common interests was one of the reasons they called it quits a few years ago.

But that’s beside the point, and not what this conversation is about.

“We’re talking about you and Frank here,” Nancy reminds her. “Are you just stringing him along to annoy me? Or do you actually have feelings for him?”

“That’s exactly it,” Deirdre says, voice dry. “I started dating Frank as part of a long-game revenge plot I came up with just to drive you mad.”

“Deirdre.”

“Come on!” she says. She sounds genuinely annoyed by now, if not a little exhausted of her own anger. “I love him, and as much as you might find it totally impossible, he loves me too.” She casts her gaze across the room. “Maybe soon you’ll realize just how much.”

It’s ridiculous how much Nancy wants it to be a trick, a lie, an attempt to wind Nancy up, but she doesn’t think it is. Deirdre’s lost her festive sparkle, looking rather glumly around the room, like this conversation with Nancy has dampened her spirits.

“Besides,” Deirdre adds, “if you wanted him so badly why didn’t you do something about it years ago?”

Nancy shakes her head. “I—I didn’t…” _Realize it. Figure it out. Know what I was missing out on._

“See? I was right,” she says. “You just want him because you can’t have him.”

With that, she takes her dramatic leave, not giving the Nancy the chance to deny it. She sweeps up her purse and finishes off her wine, leaving the empty glass sitting in front of Nancy. It feels like a good representation for just how unsuccessful tonight was, although it isn’t until the thought comes to her that Nancy has to stop and think about what her expectations of the party were to begin with. To run into Frank? To get a chance to explain, to smooth over the edges roughened by their last exchange? After that run-in with Deirdre, she’s not sure she’s even in the mood to try and tackle that challenge.

She’s in desperate need of fresh air, a chance to think somewhere techno Christmas music won’t be pounding through the walls. Nancy can see through the window that the backyard has become Christmas Party 2.0, lights strung through the tree and drunken partygoers having taken over the empty pool as a dance pit, so Nancy grabs her purse and makes for the front yard.

It’s quieter, but the music and raucous conversation can still be heard outside, barely muffled by the walls, and with her coat still upstairs, much colder than the packed living room. Nancy takes in a deep breath, feeling the chill call goosebumps to her bare arms. The block is stuffed with cars, a testament to just how many people Minkie invited to this party.

Is Deirdre right? Is her prickliness at the situation just because she’s jealous? It’s true that she misses Frank, and that she fiercely wants him back in her life.

In what way, though?

The answer tingles through her, under a surface, simmering.

“Nancy?”

Nancy jolts, very nearly losing balance on the slipperiness of the driveway where a few patches of ice have yet to melt. Alexei Markovic is stalking through the lawn toward her, dressing gown flowing behind himself that he hastens to knot around the middle.

Wait, _dressing gown_? Nancy has to stifle a chuckle.

“Don’t tell me you’re attending this infernal party!” Alexei says, standing near her. He looks up at Minkie’s house how one might observe a nuclear power plant spewing pollution into the air.

“I was invited,” Nancy admits. “Sorry it’s getting so loud.” She sneaks another glance at his state of dress; brown corduroy lounge pants peek out underneath his robe. “Nice… pajamas?”

“Hm?” Alexei looks down. He readjusts the knot of his gown. “If you must know, I was preparing to go to bed. It’s past eleven o’clock!”

Nancy lets her eyes stray to the house Alexei came charging out from. It’s definitely smaller than Minkie’s, and a bit more modest in terms of Christmas decorations: simplicity seems to be Alexei’s design style of choice, given his holiday spirit doesn’t go beyond a few large red bows on the garage door and a small string of lights, unplugged, around the porch bannister.

“I’m hardly a Grinch,” Alexei insists, straightening up. “I just like holiday festivities to end at a reasonable hour.” He checks his wristwatch for good measure, then turns to Nancy, eyebrows pulled together. “Are you all right?”

“Huh?”

“You seem upset,” Alexei says, voice softening. “Is it holiday drama, by chance?” He glances out at the snowflake projection display dancing over Minkie’s house, an almost garish contrast to the blinking strings of rainbow lights. “This time of year somehow always manages to bring out the best and worst in all of us.”

“I’m just having some… rough encounters with people I haven’t seen for a while.”

Alexei hums in acknowledgement. “Anyone I know?”

Nancy smiles wryly. “Everyone in town?”

“Ah.” Alexei sighs, and in a rare moment of comfort, carefully puts an arm around Nancy’s shoulders. He doesn't seem all that used to doing things like this, but Nancy welcomes the support regardless. “You shouldn’t pay attention. People in this town are fickle, but more than anything, they just love a good show. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

Nancy rubs the bottom of her heel against the thin sheet of ice on the driveway, fracturing it. “Right.”

“You and I both know I have experience in the matter,” Alexei says. “Not that you don’t, but let’s just say that a city all but throwing eggs at your house for a few decades gives you a tough skin.”

“It wouldn’t matter to me that much if it was only people in town,” Nancy confesses. “But it’s people close to me too.”

“Your friends?”

Nancy makes a noncommittal noise. Is Frank even a friend anymore? Does he count as such right now? And what about Ned, whose encounters with Nancy are frustrating for entirely different reasons?

Alexei gives her shoulder a gentle rub. “You want my advice? Stay away from Christmas parties. They’re breeding grounds for drama.”

Nancy laughs at that. “I think you might be right.”

Alexei lets his arm fall from around Nancy’s shoulders to check his watch again, heaving a deep sigh of displeasure. “All right,” he says. “Thirty more minutes, and I’m resorting to an official noise complaint. The citizens of this infuriating town need their rest.” He gives Nancy a diluted smile. “Don’t let anyone get to you. Goodnight!”

Nancy watches him tread his way through the snow-laden lawn back to his home, well-illuminated by the Christmas lights sitting in front of everyone’s houses. The house across the way has a giant display of lit-up reindeers pulling a Santa sleigh. Minkie’s other neighbor has what seems to be the entire selection of massive blow-ups available from Taylor’s Department Store. The neighborhood is brimming with love for the season, but Nancy herself can barely drum up an inch of Christmas spirit.

Still, of all people, she feels like she gets a pass this year.

Another shiver runs through her, urging her to go back inside. Nancy decides to go ahead and brave the party before she succumbs to frostbite, hurrying up the stairs to the door.

She opens it just as Burt Eddleton makes a grab for the handle.

“Hey, Nancy!” he says. His face darkens a little. “Ned’s looking for you, FYI.”

Nancy nods at him, but spares him no more time. She doesn’t want to hear about Ned’s urgent need to discuss their failing relationship right now. Honestly, she doesn’t want to be at this party right now at all—she’d rather be home, her _real_ home, three years ago, wrapped up in the smell of Hannah’s cooking, preparing to go caroling with her friends.

She pushes past Burt. If at all possible, the room has fattened up with even more with people and some sticky red wine stains on the floorboards to boot, all of them oblivious to Nancy’s inner turmoil.

What would her future, _now_ , look like, if she had told Frank yes in that library? What would’ve happened next? Would they have gone out for coffee like he suggested? Would Nancy have teased him for his crush, and he laughed at her for not seeing it before, until their hands brushed on the tabletop? Would it have all worked?

A sharp clinking—a knife being tapped against a wine glass—summons the attention of the party. At the front of the living room stands Deirdre, up on her tiptoes in order to be noticed over the heads of everyone else.

“Hey everybody!” Deirdre says, loud enough to drown out any chattering. “We have a big announcement to make!”

She grabs Frank’s wrist, who leans in and whispers something to her, but Deirdre seems to ignore it entirely, perhaps not hear it at all. Her smile is wide, unabashedly pleased.

“We’re getting married!”

A second of silence sizzles, and then the room is exploding in congratulations and cheers of encouragement and clapping. Nancy can hardly move. A glistening ring on Deirdre’s hand catches the light as she shows it off, hand held high for anyone who wants to catch a glimpse. The entire moment feels like it’s been branded into Nancy’s memory.

“A toast!” someone shouts, and the rest of the speech is lost to the sounds of clinking champagne flutes.

A hand touches the small of Nancy’s back. It’s Ned.

“Nancy, are you okay?” he asks.

She looks over at him. There’s concern in his eyes, like the kind that she remembers never seemed to fade from his face back when they were dating—at least, back from when she _remembers_ them dating—because he felt that every time she ran off to tackle a case, it was like she was a green soldier taking off for war overseas.

“Ned,” she says, looking down. “I think we should have that talk now. Do you have a moment?”

He nods, but he must be able to read the mood off of Nancy’s eyes, because he doesn’t look particularly hopeful at the suggestion. Instead he heaves a sigh and scans the busy room.

“I’m sure we can find a quieter room here somewhere,” he mutters. He turns to Nancy. “Come on.”

They end up upstairs in a guest bedroom, occupied by nothing but partygoers’ coats piled on top of an unused bed. Neither one of them bothers to turn the lights on, both to avoid being intrusive and (in Nancy’s case) to avoid being able to see all the unhappy details of Ned’s expression.

“So,” Ned begins. “Do you maybe want to tell me what’s going on lately?”

Nancy would if she could properly explain it. As it is, she’s still as lost now in the situation as she was a few days ago, if not even more so.

Still—that’s little more than an excuse. Dragging this conversation out, despite Nancy doing it for Ned’s sake, is harming more than it’s helping. If she cares about Ned—present day Ned, past Ned, future Ned—she has to find a way to fix this. Ned deserves better than to be stuck in this uncertain limbo.

“All right,” Nancy cautiously begins. “I’ve been giving our relationship a lot of thought lately. And, honestly, I’m just… not sure we were right to get back together.”

Even in the darkness, the badly hidden surprise on Ned’s face is easy to locate. Something pinches Nancy, but it isn’t a pang of regret—guilt, yes, for dropping this on Ned, but not regret.

“What?” Ned smiles; the sight of it oddly unsettling. “What do you mean?”

“Are you… really happy together?” she asks, dreading the answer.

Ned’s smile falters a hair. “Of course,” he says. “You—you aren’t?”

“I just… don’t think we make sense anymore. I’m so sorry, Ned.”

“How long have you felt this way?”

Nancy wishes she had a good answer to that. Time has been a mess in her head, the past, the future, the present all muddling together into one twisted lump. All she can really say is that she knows what she’s feeling _now_. She wants everything to go back to normal, but the disturbing part is that she doesn’t know what _normal_ is anymore, what it would be, what she wants it to be.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “I just know that this isn’t where we belong. Not like this.”

“Not like this,” Ned repeats. Despair has crept into his tone, despite his obvious attempts to hide it. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “Nancy, I love you,” he says, voice breaking at the end. “Please.”

Nancy wracks her brain for something to say in response, but it’s full of static, of pointless white noise. She can’t push past the visual of Deirdre flashing an engagement ring to the room at large, of Frank behind her, smiling, pleased, fond. She wishes she could focus on the current conversation, if not tell Ned what it is he so clearly wants to hear. His eyebrows are suspended with dejection, mostly already aware of what’s to come.

“Ned,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes glisten, moisture coming to the surface, before he roughly pulls himself away, undoubtedly so Nancy won’t see the tears prickle their way to the surface. She’s hit with how horribly unfair this is. It wasn’t that long for her since the last time they had this conversation, and now she has to relive it all again, the sadness, the gloom, the shaking heartbreak in Ned’s stance.

She’s stuck, torn between the impulse to comfort and the intuition that Ned doesn’t want her here right now. It would be cowardly to run, but what is it she can do if she stays? She doubts anything she has to say would soothe the hurt, not yet.

She turns to leave, to let Ned compose himself, but he grabs her by the hand before she can go.

“Wait,” he says, voice choked. “Nancy, we’ve been here before.”

“What do you mean?”

“Three years ago, it was the same.” He gives her a watery, feeble smile. “But we found each other again. And we will again, I know we will. We’re meant to be together. Don’t you feel it?”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she doesn’t. She can’t pinpoint when it happened, but they outgrew each other, split off like branches into different directions. Ned hasn’t noticed yet, but she has. She’s known for a while. But trying to explain that to him now—

“I—I just don’t think so, Ned,” she says gently. She feels like she ought to apologize again, but isn’t sure Ned even cares to hear her repeat herself over and over. She _is_ sorry, but such a sentiment isn’t worth much when it isn’t wanted. “I hope we can still be friends. I really want us to be.”

“Friends,” Ned repeats, choked. “I… I don’t know, Nancy. Not right now, anyway.”

Nancy feels her throat shut, her heart constricting the path. She should’ve known this might’ve been collateral damage; she can only break Ned’s heart so many times before even friendship has to be taken off the table for him.

“I’m sorry, Nancy, but I… have to go,” Ned says. He slides past her, head ducked.

On some ingrained instinct, Nancy tries to follow him. She only makes it into the hall before she loses sight of him amid the partygoers, loud and tipsy as they dance, lending Ned a perfect escape. Nancy knows this was something she had to do, but the aftermath is sitting in her stomach like lead paint, to say nothing of how she’s supposed to proceed now. She and Ned share an apartment, and bills, and a life, a life that Nancy already knows very little about as it is. Shaking it up feels a little like doing the same to a can of carbonated soda and waiting for the impact from the inevitable explosion.

Not knowing when that explosion is coming is probably the worst part.

“Hi.”

Nancy turns, and there’s the one person she didn’t want to see right now—Frank. Newly-engaged Frank. The future husband of Deirdre Shannon. Something rolls inside her stomach, and she doesn’t think it’s the shrimp appetizers.

“Hi,” Nancy says. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Frank says. His eyes soften for a moment, something wistful, youthful, claiming them. “So I guess it all turned out how it was supposed to. Me and Deirdre, you and Ned…”

“Guess so.”

“I’m… really happy for you two. It’s clear you belong together.”

Nancy doesn’t know how to respond to that. If there’s anything she can say with certainty, it’s that her and Ned don’t belong. Maybe it makes sense on paper, maybe it makes sense to the outside world peeking in, but she made the right call three years ago when she ended it with Ned. She just can’t help but think that none of this would’ve happened if—

“Right. And you and Deirdre—who would’ve thought.”

Something is pinching her eyelids, wetting them. She feels like she’s about to start crying. Suddenly, it’s like she can’t look Frank in the eyes without the intense gut feeling that she’s made a horrible mistake.

This is all wrong. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Three years ago in that library, why didn’t she say yes? Why was she so afraid? Why can’t she have the chance to fix this, to do it all over again?

She can’t stay here anymore. She needs to leave, or find Bess or George, or at the very least, remove herself from this conversation. She literally woke up one day and found herself three years later having made all the wrong decisions, having missed all the right _moments_ , and having no way of righting any of it. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to Frank, voice pinched. “I have to go. Merry Christmas.”

“Wait, Nancy,” Frank says, but whatever he has to say, Nancy can’t imagine it’ll make much of a difference. She turns around, away from Frank, away from giggling Deirdre, away from the romantic Christmas cheer the whole room has been engulfed in, suddenly feeling horribly suffocated in it. She’s drained after everything that’s happened, Ned and Frank and Deirdre, and she just wants to sleep. It’s been such a supremely awful day for her, one that feels like it’s been dragging on for weeks.

She finds Bess dancing with a boy with a red lipstick smudge on his cheek, arms looped around him as she laughs, and Nancy doesn’t have the heart to interrupt and ask her that they leave the party. There’s no need for her to bring down Bess and George with her just because she’s not feeling the thrill of the party right now.

She’ll text them later to explain. For now, she might as well head to the Drew house, fall asleep in her old bed, and hope things will look a bit less bleak in the morning.

\--

She thinks about everything on the walk home. What just happened, what could possibly happen next, why any of this is going the way it is in the first place. Was it really all her doing? Could one bad conversation in a library with her friend really spiral into such an abject future?

Perhaps she hadn’t realized just how central Frank was in her life. He wasn’t just one corner, one piece in a huge mosaic.

Piece. Nancy thinks back to her conversation with her father, how she had lamented the fact that he wasn’t seeing all the puzzle pieces she was. At least, she _thinks_ she’s seeing all the puzzle pieces.

Is she?

Snow starting to fall from the sky grabs her attention for a moment. No wonder she was getting so cold. She digs her hands into her pockets, wishing she was wearing more than just a dress under her coat. The tights Bess lent her aren’t a match for this biting cold.

There’s a package sitting there on the doorstep, pretty bulky, rather sizable. She bends down to pick it up, brushing snow off the shipping label.

“Krolmeister Industries,” she whispers to herself. She swears to god, if this is another salad cannon—

But it isn’t, made clear when she rips it open and finds, cushioned in packing peanuts, a familiar looking device, with bronzed pipes and metallic gears. There’s also a letter sticking out from between two buttons. Nancy unfolds it.

_ND,_

_I was cleaning out the company broom closet, as it were, when I found this replica of the prototype I believe you were talking about the other day. We always meant for it to be a Rubic’s Cube solver, but I axed the project before we could iron out the kinks. Since you were asking for it, I thought I would send it over to you!_

_Merry Christmas!_

_PK_

Nancy looks again at the shimmering pipes peeking out over the packing peanuts, exhaustion gone. Nerves brew in her chest as she drops the letter and starts digging out the device, going as far as to accidentally rip the box in her enthusiasm.

This is _it_ , she's sure of it. It’s a little rusted from misuse and dented with little knicks, thumbprints all over the metal, but it’s the same machine she was delivered three years ago. She fumbles for her keys to open the door and haul the box inside, all of her gloom momentarily washed away in the face of progress. She can only hope this is what she wants it to be, that this will make everything right and put it all back to normal.

Her hands are trembling as sweeps the packing peanuts aside and digs the machine out. She can only cross her fingers and hope it still works the way it did before, rather than shoot her another three years into the future where she has surely screwed up yet more aspects of her life.

Oh why, why doesn’t this machine come with a manual? The buttons loom up at her, taunting in their multitudes, begging her to press the right one. But which one is the right one?

Last time, she pressed the green button.

Perhaps that means this time she has to try the red?

She wishes she were more confident about this. As it is, it’s a complete leap of faith. Her hand hesitates as it approaches the button, a million ways this could go wrong assaulting her brain. If this truly is a _time machine_ , unintentionally invented and with dozens of unironed kinks, the dangers are insurmountable. She could end up anywhere, at any time, living any kind of life.

She presses the button.

First, nothing. Then, like a beast rousing from slumber, the machine starts to hum, as if turning on. The humming grows in strength until it seems to vibrate through the floorboards, pulsing and churning like a locomotive. Nancy almost expects steam to come whistling through the pipes, but instead, a loud _bang!_ seems to grab the whole house by its foundation. Smoke bursts from one end of the machine, a white cloud of it shimmering into being.

Nancy stumbles back in shock, and then the whiteness seems to consume the entire room.

\--

She opens her eyes, even though she doesn’t remember closing then, and a ceiling swims into view. White, dappled with bright winter sunlight. The last thing she remembers is collapsing on bed after Minkie’s party.

The events of the night prior come trickling back. Frank and Deirdre. Engaged to be married. If there was a pit in her stomach before, it’s a fully gaping maw by now, eating up her optimism.

And then there was Krolmeister’s machine, which she found on her door, but didn’t end up working.

She blinks a few times. Or did it?

A calendar on the wall catches her eye. The month, the year—all of them are _right_. As in, the past. Or the present. Nancy isn’t sure of the details anymore, not that they matters.

She sits up, suddenly wide awake. Her room looks different—it’s all as she remembers, with all the furniture in its right place, familiar clothing draped over the dresser, books she’s still in the middle of sitting on the bedside table. Everything’s back to normal, so convincingly so that she very nearly believes that the last few weeks were little more than a long, extremely detailed dream, were it not for Krolmeister’s little invention.

But they weren’t, and she knows that for sure.

Last night, Frank got engaged to Deirdre. Except that _last night_ is really _three years in the future_ , which means that what actually happened last night was that Frank confessed his feelings to Nancy in a library, and Nancy bolted.

She still has time to fix this. She just has to hurry.

Nancy grabs her phone, where an unread text message sits in her notifications. It’s from Frank, sent at an ungodly early hour this morning.

_Nancy, sorry to let you down with the case. Given the circumstances, I’m going home early today. Just think it’s for the best. Joe’s still staying to help you with the case. Sorry about yesterday._

Nancy nearly drops the phone. Frank can’t leave yet, not now, not when she’s finally figured it all out, even if did take her _weeks_ to do so. She knows how this story turns out if she lays dormant and tries to let the situation sort itself out, if she gives Frank too much space and he ends up finding comfort and love elsewhere. She has to do something now, before it’s too late.

She tries to call Frank, to beg him to stay just a little longer, but that plan comes to an abrupt halt when the line jumps straight to voicemail. Could he already be in the plane? Nancy doesn’t think any planes take off from River Heights so early, but—

She jumps to her feet, pulling on the first sweater she sees. There's a chance Frank isn’t at the airport yet, or at least boarding. She can still make a chance out of this, and decides to go straight to the source to try it out.

The streets have iced over a bit overnight, but Nancy still braves the roads as she drives—all right, speeds—her way to the Regent Hotel.

She slips by the front desk before they can notice her, hurrying to Frank and Joe’s room—second floor, third hallway from the left. She thuds her way up the carpeted stairs like a woman possessed. She feels almost like she’s on a case, chasing after a hot clue, time breathing down her neck all the while.

She pounds on the room door, hoping, _hoping_ Joe isn’t out right now, cruising through town or going on a cheeseburger spree at Hamburger Heaven.

Still, she hears the faint sound of the TV through the door as she gingerly leans her ear against it. The door opens a second later.

“Nancy,” he says, surprised. He takes in her position: the ear to the door, the alert posture. “What’s going on, Detective?”

She doesn’t waste time explaining. “Joe, I need the number of Frank’s flight back to New York.”

“Jeez, hi. I’m doing fine, thanks.”

“ _Joe_ , please.”

“What do you even need something like that for?”

Nancy feels her patience wear a little thinner, shaving some politeness along as it goes. “I’ll explain it later, okay? Right now I really need Frank’s flight number. Can you check his email?”

“Okay, okay. Hold on.” He sighs and retreats into the room. He leaves the door open, though, which Nancy takes as an invitation to follow. Morning cartoons are on TV, and Joe’s side of the room is in complete disarray, but the bed near the window is neatly made, its adjacent end table empty. How long has Frank been gone already?

Joe boots up a laptop. At Nancy’s impatient hand-wringing as the screen starts up, he says, “If you’re lucky, Frank left all his stuff logged in here last night. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have to call him.”

“I already tried that. His phone’s off.” That, or he’s screening Nancy’s calls. Nancy grimaces. “Did he tell you why he’s leaving early?”

“Not quite,” Joe says. He peers at Nancy with critical speculation. “But I have a feeling you know why, and it has nothing to do with your investigative skills.”

“I’ll explain later, I promise,” Nancy says. She turns her attention to the computer, hoping to lead by example. “Are you finding anything?”

Joe clicks open a browser. He whistles when a few saved tabs pop up, one of them undoubtedly Frank’s email. The latest is from an airline, and Nancy feels her heart pump its way up to her throat like it’s climbing a ladder as Joe opens it.

“Flight number is N54H1.”

“And when does it leave?”

“Little bit less than an hour. Why?” Joe turns to her in confused exasperation. “What’s going on? Why did he tear out of here this morning like some kinda fugitive?”

“It’s a long story,” Nancy says, seizing the hotel notepad from the desk and jotting down the flight number. “But right now I don’t have time to tell it.”

“Well, you better later,” Joe grumbles. “‘Cause no way am I leaving River Heights without an explanation.”

\--

The drive to the airport is torturously long after that. Nancy wishes there were someone in the car with her, someone to lighten the mood up and keep her motivated. Knowing how this story could all turn out if she doesn’t manage this, if she lets him go and doesn’t fix this, it’s more of a source of stress than anything else. She knows, logically, that she can try and make this right after Frank leaves, but what if he won’t talk to her? What if he’ll ignore her calls? She doesn’t think that he will, but then again, she never thought they’d go three years without speaking either.

No, she has to do this _now_. She just has to get to the airport before his plane takes off.

Not helping this cause is the police car that’s come up behind her, flashing its lights. Nancy groans. Not _now_. She pulls over, accelerated heartbeat no longer in tune with the speed of her driving, and the cop car scoots along the side of the ride with her.

In her rearview mirror, Nancy can make out a familiar face climbing out of the car.

“Hey, Miss Drew,” Detective Ryan says as he crouches by her window. “Thought I recognized your car. Driving a little fast there, aren’t ya?”

“Sorry,” Nancy says. “I didn’t realize. I’ll be more careful, I promise.”

He peers inside the car. Nancy grabs the steering wheel and tries to channel all of her skyrocketing nerves into her grip. “Whatcha in such a hurry for?”

“It’s kinda a long story,” she says quickly. “I’m just trying to get to the airport to catch a plane.”

“You won’t get very far with that on the ground,” he says, clearly pleased with his joke, and Nancy indulges him with a few quick laughs.

She has to get _going_.

“Listen,” she says, wishing more than anything that Bess would be with her in the car right now. Bess has flirted, dated, and smiled her way out of nearly every ticket she’s ever gotten, and it helps that Detective Ryan’s sweet on her. But that sort of thing is Bess’ domain, not Nancy’s. “Any chance I could get you to forget about this? You’d be doing me a huge favor.”

“I don't know…” Detective Ryan spares an uneasy glance at the parked police car behind them. “I’m training a newbie today. Wouldn’t be all that professional to have them watch me go easy on the law.”

All right, fine. Flirting might be Bess’ talent, but Nancy’s is weaseling her way out of a tight spot, any means necessary.

“Oh, I really hope you’ll reconsider. It’d be like paying me back.”

“Huh?”

Nancy smiles, the picture of innocence. “Remember that favor I did for you last year, Detective? When I didn’t tell Chief McGinnis about you losing those case files _and_ I helped you track them down for free?”

The color drains out of Detective Ryan’s face. “Uh,” he sputters. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I was just thinking about it,” Nancy says. “Any chance you could repay the favor?”

Detective Ryan looks at her long and hard, long enough that Nancy can see the nervous ticks spring to life on his face—the lip licking, the slightly sweaty temple. He glances at the cop car behind them. Then back to Nancy. Then to the sky, perhaps in prayer.

“Sure,” he says, giving her an uncomfortable smile. “I can do that. Besides, it’s not like you were going ninety in a school zone or anything. And it won’t happen again, right?”

“I promise,” Nancy says. “Thanks, Detective.”

He claps his hand on the open window and then hurries back to his car. Nancy will find a way to make it up to him—later. After all of this has been taken care of.

The minute he drives out of sight, Nancy peels off, hoping to make up for lost time.

The rest of the drive is practically a haze. Nancy remembers little more than the pounding of her own overeager heart, the blur of traffic lights, and her own muscle memory guiding the way. She’s driven to the airport enough to have the route down pat, but today, it’s the parking lot giving her grief thanks to the influx of holiday travelers. It was already bad the day she picked up Frank and Joe, but it’s only gotten worse since as Christmas creeps closer.

The garage is full, and the parking attendant wishes her luck finding a spot in the lot, and Nancy is barely polite enough to thank her for her time before grabbing a parking ticket and peeling off in search of an empty spot. It looks grim for a while, even the promising spots ending up being taken by motorcycles, and to make matters worse, Nancy’s car is clearly not the only one prowling through the lot looking for a space.

It takes fifteen minutes of restless circling for a spot to become free. Nancy sets her blinker as the car slowly—so, so slowly, _glacially_ —backs out of the space and leaves Nancy to zoom in.

She parks her car and _runs_. She’s already lost too much time with driving and Detective Ryan and trying to find a parking space.

She nearly runs smack into a group of airport carolers as she charges inside. The airport is always a madhouse during the holiday season, and today is no exception, the place bustling with harrowed commuters and families traveling in bulk. Nancy squeezes her way through all of them, anxious to get to the departure board.

_N54H1: New York City - Boarding_

Nancy lets out a breath she was holding captive. She still has time. Not much of it, but enough to try for a miracle.

She rushes to the Information counter. A woman in a felt Santa hat is behind the desk, occupied by her computer. A distinct lack of holiday cheer is visible on her flat expression.

“Hi,” Nancy says, struggling to keep her urgency at bay. “Can you help me contact a passenger?”

“Can I help you with something, ma’am?”

Nancy feels her patience whittling away like a carving knife to a chunk of wood. “Yes, to contact a passenger. He should be getting ready to board a flight to New York. I have a fight number.”

“My apologies,” the woman says. “But I can’t divulge passenger information with the general public.”

“Oh, I don’t need any information. More like I have some to share. If you could just summon him to the information desk, or use the intercom to send him a message, that’s all I really need.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s just now allowed. I’m sorry.” She doesn’t sound it. “If there’s nothing else I can help you with, happy holidays.”

The woman turns away from Nancy, effectively shutting down conversation down. Nancy’s eyes scan the desk, unwilling to give up so fast. The intercom microphone is _right there_ , within grabbing distance, next to the computer keyboard. Nancy’s certainly done worse for the sake of justice, so why not go the same distance for love?

_Love_. Nancy’s cheeks go red.

“Um.” She taps her fingers on the counter to get the woman’s attention once more. “Actually, there is something else you could help me with. Any chance you could get me some information on how to get to the nearest hotel?”

“Take the exit from the airport, then take the next left. Shouldn’t be far away.”

“Oh, but.” Nancy rolls up on the toes of her boots. She just has to make this work. “Any chance you could print some directions out?”

She nods to the printer tucked into the corner. Far enough away that Nancy will be able to make a swipe—just one—at what she needs on the desk here. The woman glances at the printer, sighing grumpily.

“All right,” she says. “Give me a second.”

She pulls up some instructions from Google Maps while Nancy waits, impatient, for the right moment to come. She only has one shot at this before she’s most likely escorted out by security.

The woman turns to the printer just as it groans to life, slotting paper into place. Nancy seizes the intercom microphone, turning it on.

“Frank? It’s me, Nancy.” She can hear her own voice echoing through the airport speakers, loud enough to attract attention of some passersby. The woman manning the printer whips around, furious. “I don’t know if you’re listening, but if you are, _please_ don’t go. I’m sorry about what happened yesterday, and I know you don’t want to leave it like this either.” The microphone is a little slippery in her hands, and it takes a moment for her to realize she’s sweating from nerves. “I’m at the airport entrance. Frank, if nothing else, I just need to tell you that—”

The microphone is ripped roughly from her hands.

“Why, you—!” The woman is seething, coloring a blotchy red at being hoodwinked. She tucks the microphone close to her chest. “You need to leave!”

She makes a grab for her phone, punching in a number that is most definitely airport security. Nancy can take a hint when she sees one, and beats a hasty retreat away from the information desk. If she can just evade security until Frank comes for her, she’ll be golden.

_If_ Frank comes for her. She hurries to the main entrance of the airport, tucking herself behind a large family squabbling over the accepted weight of carry-on items, hoping to blend in with the other travelers while keeping an eye peeled above the crowd, looking for that familiar head of dark hair.

It doesn’t come. A few guards stroll by, the radios tucked into their belts sizzling with cut-off reports of suspicious behavior, but don’t seem to notice Nancy. She knows she can’t wait by this door forever, hoping sheer prayer will materialize Frank in front of her.

He has to come. The Frank she knows wouldn’t leave things like this, not if he thought Nancy wanted to salvage the situation. He wouldn’t sacrifice their friendship if he knew it was reparable.

A dark-haired man in a blue peacoat walks by, briskly pushing his way through the crowds. Nancy starts when she sees him—she knows that walk, that gait. She hurries to slide between the people separating them.

Nancy grabs him by the shoulder. “Frank!”

The man turns, confused. He’s not Frank. Nancy’s hand falls away from him as if scorched.

“Oh. I’m—I’m so sorry.”

He gives her a tight smile, and continues on his way. Nancy feels numb, disconnected from reality, as she watches him walk away, quickly swallowed by people and luggage carts.

Frank’s not coming. Even if he had to run from the other end of the airport, he would’ve made it here by now. If he heard that announcement—and how could he not?—he’s decided not to find Nancy.

The impact of that realization settles in Nancy’s stomach like lead.

\--

The drive back is significantly less energized than the ride to the airport. Nancy’s stress has been entirely replaced by brooding, to say nothing of the disappointment she feels in herself. If only she had gotten there faster, woken up earlier, said something to Frank in the library to keep him from running off after his admission of feelings. If only, if only. It’s the sort of regret she’s only ever felt during a case before.

She might have to get used to the idea that this could be the end for her and Frank. She can try and salvage it, but if he doesn’t want to, there isn’t much more she can do to convince him otherwise. Maybe he wants to take time away from her to get over his feelings, to go back to being nothing more than friends, and he’ll need absence for that, and in that absence he’ll find things like Deirdre Shannon and a career he won’t ever update Nancy on.

She’ll just have to do her best to repair this and hope that Frank will let her. She pulls her phone out at a red light and texts him: _I tried to talk to you at the airport, but I missed you. Please call me when you land._

In the meantime, she goes home. She doesn’t want to aimlessly meander, melancholy dragging her down, through the town while she waits for miracles to happen on their own accord. She should already be thrilled that she’s back in the right year, surrounded by familiar places and people and things, rather than worry about the future. 

She tries to remember where she left off here, as if searching for an invisible bookmark. Maybe she just has to shelve all this until after the holidays, and enjoy Christmas for the time being, not to mention that if anybody starts asking why her mood is so dim, it’ll be hard to explain that a Krolmeister product that sent her into the future is to blame.

The big red bows hanging from the outdoor lanterns and wreaths hung over the garage doors of the Drew House certainly seem to inspire a certain amount of Christmas faith. Nancy remembers how Christmas was when she was younger, when her mother was alive, how it always seemed like an extra sprinkling of magic was in the air. She needs it now. Then again, perhaps she’s too old to rely on such things.

She sighs as she pulls the car into the driveway, the barest of snow not fully shoveled away crunching under the tires. A December chill wraps around her, icy, the moment she steps out of the warm car, drawing her coat around herself more securely.

She stops so quickly she nearly tips over on the slippery path up to the house when she sees Frank sitting, scarf pulled up over his mouth and hands rubbing together for warmth, on the porch steps.

“Frank?” she says carefully, hesitantly, half-expecting the figure to turn his head and reveal himself to be a random neighbor, her addled brain only seeing Frank everywhere because her mind is swirling with thoughts of him. When he glances up to face her, however, she can verify that it is indeed Frank Hardy, nose pink from the cold and coat buttoned all the way up and down.

He hastens to get to his feet when he notices her standing in front of him. He look just as nervous as Nancy does—if not less puzzled at the situation—which, strangely enough, is almost calming. She takes a deep breath.

“Nancy, hi,” he says. His voice is also much too high and forcedly casual to ever be considered natural. “Sorry if I surprised you.”

“I thought you were flying back to New York,” she says, doing her best to word this so it doesn’t come across as an accusation. She’s just struggling to wrap her head around the situation, that Frank is _here_ , that he didn’t leave at all. There’s something about him she feels immeasurable comfort from, something she realizes the Frank from three years later was missing—a less guarded, more relaxed happiness about him. “Your text—”

“I know,” Frank says quickly. “I was planning on leaving, but then—I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.”

“I was at the airport,” Nancy says. It seems like an important detail, if only so he knows that she went after him.

“You came to the airport?”

“I wanted to talk to you, but I thought I was too late.”

“Oh,” Frank says. Nancy can’t quite parse out the underlying emotion in the pause that follows. Then a small, amused smile tugs at the corner of Frank’s mouth. “I wanted to talk to you too. That’s why I didn’t fly back yet.” He lets out a breath, one that frosts in the air. “Could we go inside?”

His cheeks are colored, and Nancy isn’t sure if it can be blamed on the wind. She hurries to unlock the front door—her manners must’ve made way for sheer surprise—and kicks the snow off her boots at the mat before stepping inside, Frank following close behind. The house is warm, almost too warm in comparison to outside, and the heat tingles up Nancy’s cheeks.

The anticipation of what’s to come does too.

“Do you mind if I go first?” Frank asks. He looks her straight in the eyes, expression firm, carved into place by determination, as if he’s already rehearsed this entire conversation in his head.

“Go ahead.”

He gently takes in a breath. “Well, then let me apologize.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have reacted yesterday in the library like I did.” His face is pink, much too pink to be the work of the winter chill alone. “It was childish, and I’m sorry. I ambushed you with something I should’ve given you time to process.” He reels in another breath. “If we could forget about this whole thing, I’d really appreciate it.”

Nancy can hardly do anything but stare, dumbfounded, as Frank speaks in front of her. He wants to forget it all? After the December she’s had, she won’t _ever_ be able to forget any of it.

She thinks of three years from now, how everything changed. It’s remarkable how hazy it feels by now, almost like a confusing dream, one that fades away and retreats back into the cove of imagination after waking up. Still, she remembers the important bits: Frank and her, and the uncrossable chasm burned between them, to say nothing of the added bonuses of people like Deirdre.

If she ends this all here, agrees to sweep Frank’s confession under the table, will it all happen the same way again? Will the post-confession awkwardness drive a wedge between then? Will Frank still find Deirdre? Will they still fall in love and get married? Will it all happen like Nancy saw it happen if she doesn’t do something right here, right now?

Her stomach swoops. “We don’t have to—”

“But we _can_ ,” Frank cuts in. Despite the strength of his voice, Nancy can still tell that he’s on the edge of pleading. “We can go back to when everything was still… all right.”

Nancy can’t help but wonder what it was Frank mulled over while hightailing it to the airport. Perhaps he’s reconsidered his feelings, reexamined the validity of them and found them insubstantial. Something like the roots of weeds take shape around Nancy’s gut, winding tightly between her ribs.

Is such a realization something she should be wanting?

She takes a deep breath. “You can do that?”

“Go back?”

“Move on,” Nancy clarifies.

Frank seems startled by the question, but regains his composure soon enough. “Yeah,” he says. “People do it all the time, don’t they?” He rubs idly at the spot between his eyebrows with his thumb. Nancy recognizes it as a nervous tic, one Frank’s typically better at hiding. “I couldn’t let go before, not when I didn’t know what to expect. Now I know, so…”

“...so now you can?” Nancy finishes for him.

Frank nods. He looks so determined, so soberly intent, so grave, that Nancy can do little but make a snap decision based purely on feeling rather than logic. It’s the complete opposite of what she’s learned to do for her detective work, a game of reason and deductions, but here and now, sheer emotion is at play.

“Don’t move on, Frank,” she says, stepping closer. Frank follows the movement with wide eyes. “I don’t want you to.”

“Nancy?”

She grabs his hand, squeezing, hoping it’ll help her point come across. “The last few weeks have opened my eyes so much. You have no clue. The things I was missing—I can’t believe they were right in front of me all this time.” She huffs at herself. “As a detective, I expected more from myself.”

“Uh.” Frank looks a little lost, but understandably so. “What exactly happened the last few weeks?”

Nancy shakes her head. “It’s a long story. But the important part is this: I have feelings for you, Frank. I just hadn’t realized before, but I do. And I have for a long time, I’m pretty sure.”

“You… you what?”

She does the only thing she can think of, the very thing she’s been aching to do for days now, and throws her arms around Frank’s shoulders, pulling him into a hug that’s warm and satisfying and proof that this is real, this is happening. Frank’s arms, hesitant at first but growing in conviction, encircle Nancy’s waist.

She buries her head into his neck. His wool coat is scratchy beneath her cheek but it feels unthinkably good to hold him regardless, to have him let her do so. His chest rises shakily against hers, taking in a breath that Frank lets out, slowly, against her collarbone.

“I’m sorry that it took me so long to notice,” Nancy says. It’s somehow easier to lay herself bare like this when she isn’t looking at Frank directly. “Three years from now, I don’t want to have lost you.”

“Three… years from now?”

She must sound like a madwoman, but in truth, she’s never been struck with more clarity: three years from now, she doesn’t want to be fulfilling some pre-written destiny of breaking Ned’s heart all over again while she complacently lets job offers and life opportunities and _Frank_ pass her by. She wants to be with Frank, globe-trotting from mystery to mystery, sharing a souvenir-stuffed apartment with him that is full of photographs of them stuck on the fridge. She wants to be so incandescently happy with him that little else matters—and she _will_ be, she just knows.

She pulls back from his neck, putting a modicum of distance between them. “Frank, I want to be with you,” she says. She feels inordinately out of her element, and resists the urge to text Bess for advice. “Tell me if I’m no good at these relationship talks.”

A smile cracks over Frank’s face. “You’re doing all right,” he says. “Nancy, can I…?”

His thumb trails gingerly under the curve of Nancy’s lower lip. Nancy turns slightly pink.

“O-oh. Of course.”

He leans in and kisses her, at first chastely and politely, and then carefully growing bolder as his hands slide down the small of Nancy’s back to keep her pressed close to him. His kisses are sweeter than Nancy would’ve guessed, need and authority pushed aside for the time being in favor of softness.

This is a side of him most people are in the dark about, only privy to how Frank is as a friend, a brother, a detective. He’s good at all of the above, so it’s no surprise he’d be good at this too, at being a boyfriend, a _partner_. Nancy feels a thrill run through her at the prospect.

When they part from the kiss, Frank doesn’t go far. He cups Nancy’s cheeks, tipping his forehead against hers.

“I’ve waited a long time to do that,” he admits. “For a while, I really didn’t think I ever could.”

Nancy refuses to dwell on the agony of it all—Frank’s years-long crush, kept hidden like a suffocating secret under his collar, or Nancy herself, stuck wading her way through her swampy feelings while watching, three years in the future, as Deirdre keeps close to Frank. Neither of them have had it very easy here.

She kisses him again before he can wallow in his romantic hardships. She’s in awe at how smoothly this is happening, how easy it feels, how nice it is to be pulled closer by Frank’s arms. Nancy responds in kind, weaving her hands around Frank’s waist. Despite her wondering what kind of a kisser he would be, she wasn't prepared for the reality of it, the ginger touches intermingled with the firm intent, every ounce of affection palpable as he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her. She could spent all afternoon like this, just becoming an expert in Frank's hands and lips and body, when—

They’re promptly interrupted by frantic knocking on the front door before it bursts open.

“There you— _both_ of you?!” 

Joe stands at the threshold, equal parts exasperated and relieved to have tracked down the objects of his search. His expression doesn’t seem to have any room left over for surprise at finding Frank and Nancy making out.

“Joe?” Frank says, startled. His hold on Nancy doesn’t lessen.

“I’ve been texting _you_ —” He points at Nancy, accusatory. “—to tell you that Frank didn’t actually end up going to the airport, and I’ve been texting _you_ —” His condemning finger turns to Frank. “—to tell you that Nancy was going after you, but _neither of you horrible people_ ever seem to check your phones!” He takes a breath in. Seems to take note of the lack of proximity between them. “Looks like I missed something, huh?”

Nancy looks at Frank, looking for the right words to explain. She doesn’t want to presume, but then she sees how Frank looks at her in turn, eyes hopeful, mouth barely daring to slide into a smile, and realizes Frank needs the reassurance much more than she does. She slips out of his arms, grabbing his hand instead.

“Sorry, Joe,” she says. “We both are. We both needed to talk to each other.”

Joe’s eyebrows lift suggestively, performing a dance of innuendo. “That didn’t look like talking.”

Frank’s face goes red. “Joe!”

“We’re… going to do this. Dating,” Nancy says. Frank’s blush must be contagious, because she can feel herself heating up.

“Wow. Two people absolutely terrible at relationships try dating,” Joe says, deadpan. “This might just work.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “To think of the thousands of nights I lost sleep during because Frank needed to whine about his unrequited crush. _Thousands_.”

“It wasn’t _thousands_ ,” Frank says hastily.

“ _Millions_ ,” Joe amends. “How did this even happen, anyway?”

“Well, actually…” Nancy stops, wondering exactly how beneficial it is to her to explain the details of what she just went through, followed by an obligatory half an hour of doubtful _really?_ s passed around, followed by sheer disbelief. No matter how persuasive she is, it definitely is a lot to expect someone to understand _I was flung forward in time and learned from the consequences of my actions and fell in love with Frank in the process._.

Speaking of—

Frank's grip on her hand tightens. “Something wrong?”

“I just remembered something,” she says, gears churning away. “Remind me to make a call to that Russian ballet manager…”

\--

**Three Years Later**

“Here you go,” George says cheerfully, doling out gingerbread cookies to Bess and Nancy as she squeezes through the crowd. She saves one for herself, biting the head off of a gingerbread man.

“George, I said I wanted fondue,” Bess says, even as she stuffs half a cookie into her mouth. “This isn’t fondue.”

“Relax, Bess. All the food isn’t going to be eaten in the first ten minutes of the party.”

Bess chews moodily on a gingerbread arm. “You never know. There’s so many people here!”

“That’s because Minkie invites everyone in town she knows,” George says. Her eyes scan the packed room. “And those she doesn’t.”

Nancy bites down on the cookie, smearing a frosted gingerbread sleeve in the process. As it’s happened before, tonight feels familiar, tickling the edge of a shimmering memory. Minkie McNab’s Christmas party—she can hardly believe she didn’t remember before. Naturally, some things never change, no matter how much the past is tinkered with.

So much has changed from the last time Nancy was here. She would hardly believe it happened at all if not for the machine from Krolmeister she made sure to have her father keep—bubble-wrapped, safely stowed away—in his basement. Just in case.

“By the way,” George says, leaning in, “Deirdre’s going around telling everyone she has huge news.” She turns to Nancy. “Any idea what that could be?”

“You don’t think—” Bess gasps.

“Hey,” Joe says, appearing to Nancy’s left. From his windswept hair, red cheeks, and the melting snowflakes on his sleeves, the weather outside is getting particularly wintery. “What’d I miss? Parking’s a nightmare out there. Cars are lined up down the road, and let me tell ya, some crotchety neighbor out there is _not_ happy about it.”

“That’s just Alexei. He won’t really call the police,” Nancy promises him.

“I don’t know, he sure seemed real excited to do just that.”

Nancy notices a swollen wrist when Joe readjusts his Christmas sweater as he takes his heavy coat off. “Too much fun at Rink World?”

“It’s all fun and games until some little runt skates into you from behind,” he grumbles darkly, yanking his sleeve over his injury. “You would’ve seen for yourself if you had come along.”

“Sorry, Joe. I was working on a case.”

Bess clears her throat and cocks her head pointedly towards George. “Excuse us?”

“Sorry,” Nancy says again. “ _We_ were working on a case.”

“Almost thought you forgot about us there, Drew,” Bess says.

“As if she could ever do that,” George says, nudging Bess. “We’re a vital part of her operation.”

The operation, in this case, being Nancy’s worldwide detective business, manned by Bess and George at the helm back home when they’re not traveling for cases. For all the time she spent flying from country to country alone, Nancy quite likes having associates, especially when those associates are her exceedingly skilled best friends.

It also helps that _home_ now includes Frank and Joe and is set up in Chicago, close enough to River Heights to keep her in touch with people in town but big enough to keep her busy, along with everyone else who was—crazily, bizarrely—determined enough to come along for the ride, like Joe, who Nancy knows perfectly well is a package deal with his brother. Bess and George didn’t need any convincing themselves, Bess drawn in by the temptation of fashionable Chicagoan men and George happy to stretch her legs in a city larger than River Heights. Considering she was fielding two offers at the time to come work for tech start-ups, one in San Diego and the other in New York City, Nancy still has to pinch herself every now and then that George picked Nancy’s budding detective firm over the Big Apple or sunny California.

To say nothing of her other companion, who made his fair share of sacrifices to be close to her in Chicago too.

Utensils tapping against a champagne glass clink through the room, holstering everyone’s attention. Deirdre’s in the doorway, grinning like a well-fed shark.

“Oh boy,” Bess murmurs. “This oughta be good.”

“Big news, everyone!” Deirdre shrieks, exuberant. “We’re engaged!”

“Oh boy is right,” Joe says.

The room erupts into applause and well-wishes. A moment later, a cool hand finds Nancy’s waist. “Sorry I’m late,” Frank says, sliding close. He presses a quick kiss to Nancy’s cheek, lips cold from the frigid weather. “Looks like I nearly missed the big announcement, huh?”

“You’re just on time.”

“Minkie’s gonna be furious,” Bess says, eyes wide. She keeps shaking her head, like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing as Deirdre flashes her engagement ring around the room. “This is totally taking the thunder away from her party.”

“Are you kidding? She’s definitely loving this drama. I bet she’s praying right now for a public break-up just to make this most memorable party of the year,” George says.

“Such an auspicious reward,” Joe adds.

“Yeah, but it is _Ned_. We all know Minkie’s been trying to woo him even longer than Deirdre has.” Bess turns to Nancy, wincing. “Nancy, you okay with this?”

Nancy rolls her eyes. “Bess, I’m the one who set them up three years ago.”

“You’re not suggesting Nancy _should_ be upset about this, are you?” Frank asks. “Careful. You could worry a guy.”

Bess goes pink, straightening up. There is a small amount of frosting next to her mouth she doesn’t seem to be aware of. “I just meant! I mean, c’mon, it’s _Deirdre_. Poor Ned.”

Nancy looks across the room where Ned, flushed with happiness, is holding an eggnog in one hand and Deirdre’s hand in the other like he has everything he needs in life close by. Nancy smiles. She’s going to have to congratulate them later, even if it will inevitably result in Deirdre off-handedly mentioning that red is just _not_ Nancy’s color, but how brave of her it is to wear it so openly. Today, she’ll gladly take the ribbing.

“I don’t think he’d agree with you,” Nancy says. “He seems very happy.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Bess relents. “Happy as a Christmas clam.”

“He’s not the only one,” Frank whispers, tucking a strand of Nancy’s hair behind her ear. His hand slides off Nancy’s waist, catching her fingers in his. “You too?”

Nancy leans into his touch, his familiar scent, his calming voice. “Very much so,” she says. She leans in to give him a soft kiss that gets interrupted by Joe very nearly sloshing his wine everywhere as he enthusiastically lifts a glass he’s swiped from a passing tray.

“To happiness!” he yells.

“And Christmas cookies!” Bess adds.

“And being surrounded by people you love,” Nancy says, lifting her glass.

“Hear, hear!”

They all clink glasses. George throws hers back in one gulp while Bess nibbles off the gingerbread man’s neck and Joe throws an arm around them both. Frank’s hand, tight in Nancy’s own, squeezes. The look he sends her is fond, grateful. 

Nancy squeezes back.


End file.
